L11: Judgment and Decision-making

A learning module on judgment and decision-making for PSYC 2040.

Goals

  • Introduce the research on heuristics and biases that guide decision-making
  • Discuss contemporary research on decision-making from a cognitive perspective

Instructions

Work through each of the following sections: Read, View/Watch/listen, and Engage. You have the full week to complete any quizzes or assignments for this module.

Read

This empirical article is available on Canvas. It is under Modules > L12. There will be quiz questions about this paper.

View/Watch/Listen

There are two sets of slides for this module.

Lecture 1


L11: Slides 1

Lecture 2


L11: Slides 2

Engage

When you are ready complete any or all of the following assignments.

  1. QUIZ: Complete the L11 quiz (on Canvas)
  2. WRITING: There are reading/writing assignments to choose from (instructions below, submit on Canvas).
  3. REFLECT: Submit a meme for the Memer of the Semester contest on Canvas (1 extra credit point for winner at the end of the semester)

Submit your work before the due date posted on Canvas. Then, move on to the next learning module.

Writing Option 1: Apply a cognitive bias to real life

There are many known cognitive biases that may influence how people make judgments and decisions. This wikipedia list provides a fairly comprehensive list of known biases, in addition to the ones we discussed in class:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

  1. Pick any cognitive bias from the above list
  2. Provide a brief definition/example of the cognitive bias that you chose
  3. Generate two real-world scenarios where you would expect the cognitive bias to influence a person’s judgment and decision-making process.

Here is an example of a completed assignment, but you will have to use a different cognitive bias.

Anchoring bias

Definition: The anchoring bias occurs when judgments are biased toward a salient and potentially arbitrary stimulus that serves as the anchor. For example, a small number could be presented as an anchor, and later judgments about quantities could be biased toward smaller numbers because the anchoring stimulus was a small number.

Real-world Example 1: A used car lot lists the sale prices of cars as much higher than they are worth. These prices serve as anchors, and they may bias potential buyers to make offers that are closer to the anchor value (higher than the car is worth), compared to the real value of the car.

Real-world Example 2: The first dish you taste at a new restaurant was way too salty. As you taste other dishes you are biased to judge them as over-salted as well.

Writing Option 2: Write a QALMRI

For this assignment, you will write a QALMRI report for the following paper:

  • Bhatia, S. (2017). Conflict and bias in heuristic judgment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(2), 319.

Writing Option 3: Answer two short-answer questions

Answer the following questions:

  • What is the representativeness heuristics? What are some biases that occur due to this heuristic?
  • Is “preference satisfaction” an adequate theory for how people make choices? Why or why not? Provide reasoning and at least one example demonstrating your argument.