Deck 12: Reasoning and Decision Making

Question 1

Peter Wason gave participants the sequence "2,4,6" and asked them to determine the rule used to generate the sequence.His findings suggest that people ______.

A)have difficulty generating possible rules to test
B)generate a rule,then look for information that could support it
C)generate a rule,then look for information that could disconfirm it
D)generate rules,but do not know how to support their rules

Answer 1

generate a rule,then look for information that could support it

Question 2

In completing Wason's four-card task,participants usually ______.

A)turn over the two cards that are necessary and sufficient to test the rule
B)turn over all four cards,when only two would have been sufficient
C)turn over all four cards,when only one would have been sufficient
D)show understanding of modus ponens but neglect modus tollens

Answer 2

show understanding of modus ponens but neglect modus tollens

Question 3

If performed correctly,deductive reasoning can be said to have ______.This means that it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.

A)inductive strength
B)deductive strength
C)inductive validity
D)deductive validity

Answer 3

deductive validity

Question 4

Conclusions that agree with one's previous beliefs ______.

A)are often judged as valid even when they are not
B)are often judged as invalid even when they are not
C)are more often judged correctly as valid or invalid than conclusions that disagree with one's previous beliefs
D)lead to biases known as "content effects"

Question 5

The tendency to seek out information that supports our current beliefs is called ______.

A)a believability effect
B)a content effect
C)a confirmation bias
D)syllogistic reasoning

Question 6

Which of the following is a difference between everyday reasoning and formal reasoning?

A)In everyday reasoning,all premises are usually supplied.
B)In everyday reasoning,there is typically one correct answer.
C)In everyday reasoning,problems are solved as a means of achieving other goals.
D)In formal reasoning,problems are not self-contained.

Question 7

When Wason's four-card task is replaced with an everyday problem about checking the identification of people who are drinking Coke and beer,______.

A)people still neglect modus tollens in their responses
B)people turn over all four cards instead of the two that are necessary and sufficient
C)people turn over only one card instead of the two that are necessary and sufficient
D)about 75% of participants solve the problem correctly

Question 8

Some members of the Jones family are tall.Some tall people play basketball.Which of the following is true?

A)Logically,some members of the Jones family play basketball.
B)Logically,no members of the Jones family play basketball.
C)Most people assume that some members of the Jones family play basketball.
D)Most people assume that all members of the Jones family play basketball.

Question 9

When it is improbable (but not impossible)for an argument's premises to be true and its conclusions false,the argument has ______.

A)deductive validity
B)deductive strength
C)inductive validity
D)inductive strength

Question 10

When people interpret premises,they ______.

A)often make unwarranted assumptions
B)often fail to consider all possible interpretations of a premise
C)perform very well if given enough practice
D)often make unwarranted assumptions and fail to consider all possible interpretations of a premise

Question 11

If a person has five letters in his or her name,then s/he is a Glirple.I can now validly assume that ______.

A)Shawn is a Glirple
B)anyone who is a Glirple must have five letters in his/her name
C)anyone who is not a Glirple cannot be named Susan
D)Shawn is a Glirple,and anyone who is not a Glirple cannot be named Susan

Question 12

If a person has five letters in his/her name,then s/he is a Glirple.Angie now reasons that Fred cannot possibly be a Glirple.Angie has ______.

A)made a correct inference according to modus ponens
B)made a correct inference according to modus tollens
C)committed the fallacy of denying the antecedent
D)committed the fallacy of affirming the consequent

Question 13

The ease of reasoning about an analogy depends on all of these factors EXCEPT ______.

A)the difficulty of comprehending the individual terms in the analogy
B)the reasoner's knowledge about the individual terms
C)the difficulty of finding a relationship between the first two terms
D)the reasoner's amount of training in formal reasoning procedures

Question 14

The mental activities that take place in choosing among alternatives are collectively called ______.

A)problem solving
B)inductive reasoning
C)deductive reasoning
D)decision making

Question 15

If a person has five letters in his/her name,then s/he is a Glirple.Fred now reasons that anyone who is a Glirple must have five letters in his/her name.Fred has ______.

A)made a correct inference according to modus ponens
B)made a correct inference according to modus tollens
C)committed the fallacy of denying the antecedent
D)committed the fallacy of affirming the consequent

Question 16

People have more difficulty working with ______.

A)premises that have negatives in them (as opposed to those that do not)
B)quantifiers such as "all" or "no"
C)quantifiers such as "some"
D)premises that have negatives in them,and quantifiers such as "some"

Question 17

Which type of reasoning results in conclusions that contain new information?

A)inductive reasoning
B)deductive reasoning
C)invalid reasoning
D)both inductive and deductive reasoning

Question 18

Deductive reasoning involves ______.

A)going from general to specific statements
B)conclusions that add new information to what is given
C)going from specific to general statements
D)going from specific to specific statements

Question 19

"If a person is drinking a beer,then the person must be over 19 years old." Participants are asked to test this rule using information on four cards;each card has a person's beverage on one side and the person's age on the other.The four cards are now presented as follows: "beer," "coke," "16 years old," and "20 years old." Which of the following describes the behavior of most college students who complete this variation of the four-card task?

A)Most turn over only the "beer" card.
B)Most turn over the "beer" and "20 years old" cards.
C)Most turn over the "beer" and "16 years old" cards.
D)Most turn over the "beer" and "coke" cards.

Question 20

Cosmides believes that evolution has pressured human beings to become very adept at reasoning about ______.

A)food sources
B)social contracts
C)safety issues
D)abstract rules

Question 21

Many Americans believed in October of 2016 that Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election.However,after Donald Trump won a narrow victory,many people argued that they "knew all along" that his opponent had no chance.This is an illustration of the ______.

A)gambler's fallacy
B)availability heuristic
C)hindsight bias
D)illusory correlation

Question 22

People overestimate the frequency of words beginning with the letter L,as compared to words that have L as the third letter,because of the heuristic of ______.

A)availability
B)representativeness
C)anchor and adjust
D)hindsight

Question 23

Expected utility theory is usually regarded as a ______ model of decision making.

A)descriptive
B)prescriptive
C)normative
D)both descriptive and prescriptive

Question 24

Normative models of decision making describe ______.

A)how we ought to make decisions in realistic circumstances
B)ideal performance under ideal circumstances
C)what people actually do when they make decisions
D)cognitive illusions

Question 25

When we assess probability by judging the ease with which relevant examples come to mind,we are using the heuristic of ______.

A)representativeness
B)availability
C)framing
D)hindsight

Question 26

Research on framing suggests that we treat losses ______.

A)less seriously than gains of an equivalent amount
B)more seriously than gains of an equivalent amount
C)just as seriously as gains of an equivalent amount
D)as if they were not possible outcomes at all

Question 27

Past events seem "inevitable" due to the action of the ______.

A)framing effect
B)hindsight bias
C)gambler's fallacy
D)illusory correlation

Question 28

Research on illusory correlations has shown that our tendency to see relationships that are not really present occurs ______.

A)only when data are ambiguous
B)only when data are very clear
C)primarily because of memory biases
D)with variables that have prior associations in our minds

Question 29

Because of the representativeness heuristic,we are likely to erroneously assume that which of the following sequences of coin flips is more probable?

A)heads-heads-heads-heads-heads
B)heads-tails-heads-tails-tails
C)heads-heads-tails-tails-tails
D)tails-tails-tails-tails-heads

Question 30

Changing the description of a decision can cause us to change our reference points,leading to illogical preferences.This phenomenon is referred to as ______.

A)hindsight bias
B)the gambler's fallacy
C)availability
D)framing

Question 31

Which of the following is NOT one of the five phases of decision making,according to Galotti?

A)goal setting
B)information gathering
C)planning
D)random choice

Question 32

You are a participant in an experiment in which you answer a long list of general knowledge questions.After answering each question,you are asked to rate your probability of being correct.If you are like the typical participant in such experiments,you will probably be correct on what percentage of questions for which you estimated "60% probability correct"?

A)55%
B)60%
C)70%
D)100%

Question 33

According to research on the anchoring phenomenon,______.

A)even when given additional information,people refuse to depart from their original "anchors"
B)people ignore rational anchors that should influence their subsequent estimates
C)even when the anchor is arbitrary,people are unwilling to adjust upward or downward from that anchor by large amounts
D)anchoring can result in serious overestimation of quantities such as 1 × 2 × 3 × 4 × 5 × 6 × 7 × 8

Question 34

You have just spent 10 minutes trying to figure out the answer to a single problem on your math quiz.In spite of your lack of success,you continue to struggle,neglecting to continue on to other problems because you've already invested so much time and effort in this problem.You have fallen victim to ______.

A)the sunk cost effect
B)a framing effect
C)the anchor effect
D)availability bias

Question 35

Cognitive illusions ______.

A)tell us that our decision-making system is seriously flawed
B)tell us something about the way our cognitive systems work
C)cannot tell us anything about how to design programs to improve the quality of decisions
D)cannot help us predict when human decision making will be optimal and when it will not

Question 36

The gambler's fallacy is thought of as a special instance of ______.

A)framing
B)availability
C)belief in the law of small numbers
D)hindsight

Question 37

According to psychologists,human decision making often falls short of optimality because ______.

A)there is not enough information available to make a rational decision
B)one cannot be rational under conditions of uncertainty
C)the information available overwhelms the cognitive processes
D)rationality assumes a higher degree of intelligence than most people have

Question 38

Anita is blonde,extremely attractive,and lives in an expensive condo.If we judge the probability of Anita's being a model as quite high because she resembles our stereotype of a model,we are using the heuristic of ______.

A)representativeness
B)availability
C)framing
D)the law of small numbers

Question 39

You are offered a chance to buy a lottery ticket.The probability of winning is 1 in 100.If you win,the prize is $100,000.According to expected value,a "fair" price for this lottery ticket would be ______.

A)$5
B)$10
C)$100
D)$1,000

Question 40

The phase of decision making that involves finding a way to organize information is called ______.

A)goal setting
B)planning
C)structuring the decision
D)evaluating

Question 41

Phineas Gage suffered damage to his ______ that resulted in an inability to plan for the future and to conduct himself according to social rules.

A)temporal lobe
B)prefrontal cortex
C)parietal lobe
D)corpus callosum

Question 42

Of the following,which should always produce a logically certain conclusion?

A)inductive reasoning
B)confirmation reasoning
C)deductive reasoning
D)utilitarian reasoning

Question 43

Participants in a decision-making study in which they had to decide among 6 or 12 apartments often eliminated some alternatives on the basis of one or two dimensions.This is an example of the strategy called ______.

A)MAUT
B)EU
C)elimination by aspects
D)normative behavior

Question 44

A ______ table shows all possible algorithmic outcomes of a propositional reasoning problem.

A)solution
B)reasoning
C)choice
D)truth

Question 45

______ effects shows that participants are more likely to affirm a syllogistic conclusion if it matches their starting assumptions.

A)Variability
B)Believability
C)Immutability
D)Choice

Question 46

______ is a normative model for integrating different dimensions and goals of a complex decision.

A)Expected value
B)Expected utility
C)MAUT
D)Framing

Question 47

Expert decision-makers may rely on intuition and mental simulation,according to the ______ model.

A)image
B)recognition-primed decision-making
C)MAUT
D)elimination-by-aspects

Question 48

______ theory assumes that people rarely go through a formal structuring process in making real-life decisions,but instead do most of their work through a pre-choice screening of options.

A)MAUT
B)Image
C)EV
D)Elimination by aspects

Question 49

Of the following,which does NOT lead to a probabilistic conclusion?

A)inductive reasoning
B)deductive reasoning
C)hypothesis testing
D)analogical reasoning

Question 50

Heuristics are to ______ illusions as the Ponzo illusion is to ______ illusions.

A)perceptual;cognitive
B)perceptual;perceptual
C)cognitive;cognitive
D)cognitive;perceptual

Question 51

According to Cosmides' social contract theory,college students should best be able to perform best on which version of the Wason selection task?

A)a task in which students are trying to help the community
B)a task in which students are trying to set up a new student organization
C)a task in which some students are trying to unfairly gain admission to the university
D)a task in which students are advocating for new student events

Question 52

Which of the following has NOT been shown to influence syllogistic reasoning?

A)phrasing
B)content
C)understanding
D)desirability

Question 53

When making a complex decision such as choosing 1 of 10 different apartments to rent,participants ______.

A)spontaneously use multi-attribute utility theory
B)use the same decision strategies regardless of the number of alternatives they are choosing between
C)systematically search for all available information
D)often eliminate some alternatives on the basis of only one or a few undesirable characteristics

Question 54

Which of the following heuristics most closely would be associated with the phrase,"I knew it all along!"

A)availability
B)hindsight bias
C)representativeness
D)confirmation bias

Question 55

Deductive reasoning leads to ______ conclusions,while inductive reasoning leads to ______ conclusions.

A)certain;probabilistic
B)probabilistic;certain
C)certain;certain
D)probabilistic;probabilistic

Question 56

The availability heuristic functions on which principle?

A)Things that are more easily remembered are assumed to occur more often.
B)Things that we understand now always would have happened.
C)If we are certain,we must be right.
D)The best evidence affirms our hypothesis.

Question 57

Patients with prefrontal cortex damage tend to show deficits in their ______.

A)intelligence
B)semantic memory
C)working memory
D)inductive reasoning

Question 58

Based on principles of overconfidence,you'd expect that a participant with ______ confidence to have ______ accuracy.

A)50%;50%
B)80%;60%
C)10%;90%
D)30%;45%

Question 59

What is a concern in using a truth table to come to a conclusion for a propositional reasoning problem?

A)As propositions increase,the number of outcomes grows exponentially larger.
B)Truth tables do not always include the correct conclusion.
C)Truth tables can only accommodate a small number of propositions.
D)The outcomes listed are only probabilistic and thus prone to error.

Question 60

A ______ curve shows the degree to which participants' confidence matches against their accuracy in any given task.

A)calibration
B)validity
C)reasoning
D)calculation

Question 61

"All dogs chase cats.Bingo is a dog.Therefore,Bingo chases cats." This is an example of deductive reasoning.

Question 62

Participants are ______ likely to experience underconfidence as they are overconfidence.

A)more
B)equally
C)less
D)never

Question 63

Phineas Gage suffered damage to his frontal lobe while working on ______.

A)a railroad
B)a mine
C)a factory
D)a tunnel

Question 64

Our reasoning and decision making ______ matches the optimal outcome.

A)sometimes
B)never
C)always
D)none of these

Question 65

Which of the following decision-making models best describes the way that experts might make decisions?

A)MAUT
B)expected utility
C)image theory
D)recognition-primed decision making

Question 66

Based on Tversky and Kahneman's (1974)anchoring findings,if I first asked you whether Boston had a population greater than 100,000 people and then asked you to estimate Boston's population,you would be MOST likely to give which of the following responses?

A)20,000,000
B)5,000,000
C)1,500,000
D)100,000

Question 67

Participants in the Wason selection task,often only affirm the positive version of the propositional rule.This is a demonstration of what heuristic?

A)confirmation bias
B)illusory correlation
C)availability
D)representativeness

Question 68

The case study of Phineas Gage implicated which brain region in reasoning and decision making?

A)parietal lobe
B)prefrontal cortex
C)cerebellum
D)amygdala

Question 69

A recent train wreck was covered around the clock on the news in David's home town.Afterward,he finds himself afraid to take a planned train trip to visit his grandparents and now feels as though train wrecks must happen all the time.This is an example of the effects of which heuristic?

A)representativeness
B)availability
C)hindsight bias
D)overconfidence

Question 70

You have anxiously been awaiting your favorite superhero movie to be released in theaters.However,30 minutes in to the movie,you realize you hate it.Thinking about how expensive your ticket was,you still decide to stay and finish the movie.This is explained by which of our heuristics?

A)availability
B)representativeness
C)sunk cost
D)hindsight bias

Question 71

According to Kahneman and Tversky,which of the following gas stations would you be most likely to choose to go to?

A)"Using your credit card will incur a 10 cent surcharge."
B)"Receive a 20 cent discount when you use cash!"
C)"Our prices never fluctuate!"
D)You would be equally likely to choose any of these.

Question 72

Image theory proposes that we ______ use all of the information at our disposal to make the best decision.

A)always
B)rarely
C)never
D)none of these

Question 73

Which notable individual is the subject of a case study showing the importance of the frontal lobe in decision making?

A)H.M.
B)P.F.
C)Christopher Reeve
D)Phineas Gage

Question 74

If P,then Q.P is true.Therefore,Q is true.This represents an instance of modus ponens.

Question 75

______ overload refers to the observation that with too much information,we often have errors in reasoning and decision making.

A)Emotional
B)Psychosocial
C)Perceptual
D)Cognitive

Question 76

The tendency to ignore larger statistical deviations on smaller sample sizes as compared to larger ones is a characteristic of which reasoning heuristic?

A)availability
B)overconfidence
C)illusory correlation
D)representativeness

Question 77

According to recognition-primed decision making,experts often perform mental ______ in order to compare a new situation to old ones and decide on possible courses of action.

A)simulations
B)imagery
C)backtracking
D)confirmation

Question 78

An argument has deductive validity if it is improbable for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.

Question 79

Which of the following is NOT one of the images that we might use to narrow down our decision making options?

A)trajectory
B)strategic
C)visual
D)value

Question 80

The confirmation bias is the tendency to search only for information that supports your existing beliefs.