Heuristics in decision making
a. may become a liability when they are applied inappropriately.
b. always lead us to the correct decision.
c. are mathematical formulas that precisely predict how people will perform on decision-making tasks.
d. are helpful in decision-making situations, but people rarely apply them
Question 2Which of the following students' statements provides the best overview of the research on decision making?
a. Samantha: People consistently make correct decisions based on the information they are given; problems arise when some crucial information is missing.
b. Nayan: People's use of heuristics in decision making is usually adaptive, unless the heuristics are applied inappropriately.
c. Arthur: People consistently make incorrect decisions, unless the material is extremely concrete.
d. Shirley: The most common kinds of decision-making errors involve belief-bias errors; otherwise, decision making is reasonably accurate.
Question 3Suppose that Oksana is driving in a car to a friend's house. As she pulls into the friend's driveway, she sees that the odometer shows the number 2222.2 miles.
She says to herself, This number is weird...something really unusual is going to happen today when I am with my friend. This reaction would be an example of
a. the consistency bias.
b. the law of large numbers.
c. the representativeness heuristic.
d. the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic.
Question 4An important difference between reasoning and decision making is that in reasoning,
a. we have well-established rules for making decisions.
b. the premises are more likely to be ambiguous.
c. the problem has greater ecological validity.
d. we are not as likely to know whether our conclusions are correct.
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