Reasoning and decision making

1. Reasoning and decision making Alyssa Candelario and Shannon Baker

2. What is Reasoning? • The action of thinking about something in a rational and realistic way, which leads to a decision.

3. Two types of Reasoning • Inductive: working with specific information and broadening into general observations, often referred to “bottom up” researchers begin with specific information and may find patterns that may occur and come up with hypotheses to explore, and finally end up with a conclusion. • Deductive: working from more general information to specific information, sometimes referred to “top-down”, when researching information you often start with a wide range of information and as you continue to work with the information you work down to specific topics.

4. Inductive vs. Deductive Inductive: Football players are tall and muscular. Derek is tall and muscular. Therefore, Derek must play football. Deductive: All apples are fruits. All fruits grow on trees. Therefore, all apples grow on trees.

5. Decision Making • Unlike reasoning, there are no established rules for decision making. Therefore, we may not always know the outcome or consequences that may follow our decisions. • Making a decision is all up to you. When making a decision you are assessing the options and choosing among them, we weigh out what we already know about the situation, and come to a conclusion about what we feel is the best choice

6. Two Systems of Reasoning and Decision Making Automatic (System One) : Requires the brain to process at a rapid and unconscious way. It causes one to follow their gut feeling, or a guess based on intuition rather than knowing any facts about the situation. Controlled (System Two) : Is the opposite of the automatic system. This system requires more of a thought process, you take time to think and reflect on an issue

7. Biases and Heuristics • Biases: Not having an open mind about a topic. • Heuristics: What the brain uses to produce judgments or decisions.

8. Confirmation Bias • Searching only for information to prove or confirm your theory. • Example: An author writing a segment on an important issue may only include information that supports his or her views on the issue.

9. Hindsight Bias • People who view events more predictable than they really are, or to report untruthfullyafter the incident has happened. • Often referred to as the “I knew it all along effect”. • Example: You are about to take an exam for which you waited last minute to study for, you feel unsure about the results; however, when you received your exam back you noticed you passed with an A, you tell your friends “I knew I was going to ace that exam.” Although just before the exam you were telling them how you did not study and did not think you would pass.

10. Availability Heuristic • An expectation or prediction which relies on immediate examples that come to mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. • Example: You’re watching the news and you hear that there has been a lot of home break-ins happening, so you start to make a judgment that home break-ins are a lot more common then they really are.

11. Representativeness Heuristic • To cast judgment on an individual or group of people, based on certain characteristics about someone (the way they look or dress), rather than on available information. • Example: Three men stand in front of you one of which is a billionaire and you’re told to choose who he is and you win a million dollars. One is wearing casual attire, the second a suit, and the third has dreads and is wearing dirty clothes and flip flops. You choose the one man who is dressed in a very nice suit and cleaned up very well. You’d be using a stereotype to make generalizations about those three men.

12. Base Rate Fallacy • If presented with related base rate information as in how often something happens in general and specific information (information only pertaining to a specific case) the mind tends to ignore the former and focus on the latter. • Example: Let’s say you read an expert report on cell phones and you’ve decided you’re going to get the new iPhone 6 but then you talk to your cousin about it and she tells you about how they bend and aren’t even that great so you decide to go with the galaxy S5 because that’s what she has and she loves it.

13. QUESTIONS?