Chapter12: Deductive Reasoning and Decision Making
1. A major way in which tasks requiring decision making differ from tasks requiring deductive reasoning is that the former kind of situation:
a) is much more ambiguous.
b) cannot be handled by using heuristics.
c) is much less common in real life.
d) All of the above are correct.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 409
2. In the dual-process theory of problem solving,
a) Type 1 processing is slow and deliberate.
b) Type 2 processing is slow and deliberate.
c) Type 1 processing requires little conscious attention.
d) Type 2 processing is always preferred over Type 1 processing.
Ans: c
Feedback: See pages 409 – 410
3. Consider the following reasoning: "If Frank's car started, then he went to town. Frank's car did not start. Therefore, Frank did not go to town." What kind of reasoning is this?
a) categorical reasoning.
b) conditional reasoning.
c) probabilistic reasoning.
d) analogical reasoning.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 410
4. Consider the following reasoning: "If Frank's car started, then he went to town. Frank's car did not start. Therefore, Frank did not go to town." Many people will accept the conclusion as being logical because they committed an error called:
a) affirming the antecedent.
b) affirming the consequent.
c) denying the antecedent.
d) denying the consequent.
Ans: c
Feedback: See pages411-412
5. Consider the following reasoning: "All animals that eat burritos have hair. Some birds eat burritos. Therefore, some birds have hair." This is an example of:
a) a syllogism.
b) conditional reasoning.
c) the propositional calculus.
d) an illusory correlation.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 410
6. Research on human reasoning reveals that a person may have relatively more difficulty (i.e., make more reasoning errors) if the premises, the conclusion, or both:
a) contain negatively worded, rather than positively worded, information.
b) are consistent with the person's beliefs or with "common sense."
c) contain abstract, rather than concrete, information.
d) All of the above are correct.
Ans: d
Feedback: See pages 414 - 416
7. Our problem-solving ability is biased, as described by
a) the belief-bias effect.
b) the confirmation-bias effect.
c) Neither effect; our problem-solving is without bias.
d) Both the belief-bias and the confirmation- bias effects.
Ans: d
Feedback: See pages 415 – 416
8. Research using the four-card selection task (Wason, 1968) suggests that most people:
a) form a mental model of the antecedent and consequent.
b) have limited knowledge of the mathematics of permutations and combinations.
c) try to confirm instead a hypothesis instead of to disprove it.
d) rely on their everyday knowledge and usually reason successfully.
Ans: c
Feedback: See pages416 - 417
9. According to some evolutionary psychologists (e.g., CosmidesTooby, 2006), people often reason very well in situations that:
a) are necessary for cooperative interactions in a society (e.g., catch a cheater).
b) are characterized by a lot of ambiguity (e.g., uncertainty about strangers on the street).
a) are like those experienced in early childhood (e.g., encounters with relatives).
d) cause a person to be highly aroused, excited, or emotional (e.g., an emergency).
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 418
10. A confirmation bias may operate in international politics when Country A (e.g., the United States) seeks support for its position that it should attack Country B (e.g., Iraq). One way to avoid this bias (according to Myers, 2002) is for:
a) Country A to try sincerely to construct arguments against attacking Country B.
b) Country B to convince Country A that the representativeness heuristic applies in this situation.
c) Country A to seek additional countries that support its position before attacking
Country B.
d) the leader of Country A to discuss the situation with experts to whom he or she has appointed to a high-level office.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 418
11. Heuristics are:
a) identical to algorithms in that they guarantee a correct solution or decision.
b) general, rational strategies that often produce a correct solution or decision.
c) decision-making strategies that have been shown to be useless and unproductive.
d) strategies in which a decision is based on the difficulty of retrieving information from memory.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 420
12. With the representativeness heuristic, we
a) judge a sample to be more likely if it is similar to the population from which it was selected.
b) judge a sample to be more likely if it is drawn from a large population.
c) judge a sample to be more likely if it has a lower base rate.
d) judge a sample to be more likely if base rate and sample size information is available.
Ans: a
Feedback: See pages 421 – 423
13. When people use the representativeness heuristic, they:
a) make a judgment based on similarity.
b) suffer from the large-sample fallacy.
c) place too much emphasis on base rates.
d) make a judgment based on ease of retrieval from memory.
Ans: a
Feedback: See pages421 - 422
14. When people are presented salient information, even if it is almost entirely worthless (as in the example of Tom W., the graduate student), they usually tend to judge the likelihood of something related to that information by:
a) using a rule on how to revise a probability estimate when they are provided some evidence.
b) focusing mainly on base-rate information and neglecting the presented information.
c) focusing mainly on the presented information and neglecting base-rate information.
d) relying on the gambler's fallacy to estimate the probability.
Ans: c
Feedback: See pages423 - 424
15. When people use the availability heuristic, they:
a) make a judgment based on similarity.
b) suffer from the large-sample fallacy.
c) place too much emphasis on base rates.
d) make a judgment based on ease of retrieval from memory.
Ans: d
Feedback: See page 427
16. The availability heuristic can be biased by
a) recency.
b) familiarity.
c) base rate information.
d) Both recency and familiarity.
Ans: d
Feedback: See pages 427 – 428
17. One important factor that sometimes leads to distortions in frequency estimates based on the availability heuristic is:
a) the amount of media coverage of a topic.
b) whether or not the event is random in nature.
c) how much money has been spent on a project.
d) the propositional calculus in estimation.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 429
18. The beliefs that gay people tend to have psychological problems, that blondes tend not to be very intelligent, and that paranoid people draw faces with exaggerated eyes are all mainly examples of:
a) the belief bias.
b) the hindsight bias
c) overconfidence in estimation.
d) illusory correlation.
Ans: d
Feedback: See page 430
19. In one study, people were asked to estimate the length of the Mississippi River after they answered a question: "Is it longer than 500 miles?" or "Is it longer than 5,000 miles?" Estimates were much smaller in the former case than in the latter case, suggesting that the estimate was influenced by:
a) an illusory correlation.
b) a base rate.
c) an anchor.
d) a risky shift.
Ans: c
Feedback: See pages 432 - 434
20. A person estimates the population of Tokyo, based on what she knows about the population of New York City, taking into account that she thinks Tokyo is a slightly larger city. Which heuristic is she using?
a) representativeness.
b) availability.
c) anchoring and adjustment.
d) crystal-ball technique.
Ans: c
Feedback: See pages 432 - 434
21. People use anchoring and adjustment processes when they estimate confidence intervals. This may lead them to:
a) suffer from the hindsight bias when they are told the correct answer.
b) give confidence intervals that are overly narrow.
c) make adjustments to their anchoring estimate that are larger than they should be.
d) rely far too heavily on the representativeness and availability heuristics.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 435
22. Research on the framing effect reveals that people:
a) rely too much on the representativeness heuristic when they make purchases.
b) make decisions in which they consider the deep structure (frame) more than the surface structure.
c) usually think that a frame applies to many kinds of decision-making situations.
d) are influenced by background context, as well as the way in which a question is worded.
Ans: d
Feedback: See page 436
23. Suppose you are going to buy a new car and the first price that is mentioned is $21,499. According to the anchoring heuristic, the most likely final price is
a) $12,200
b) $15,000
c) $21,273
d) $25,000
Ans: c
Feedback: See pages 432 – 434
24. The planning fallacy is the common tendency to:
a) underestimate the amount of time or money needed to complete a project.
b) consider in obsessive detail all the steps required to make a decision.
c) ignore information that does not seem relevant to some project or decision.
d) obtain information on the base-rate of some event in some known population.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 442
25. People are overconfident in what they could have predicted had they made a judgment before knowing an actual outcome. That is, they overestimate the accuracy with which they would have predicted an event had they been asked to do so. This is called the:
a) hindsight bias.
b) belief bias.
c) confirmation bias.
d) illusorycorrelation.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 443
26. A kind of person who is fairly satisfied with a decision that is satisfactory, although perhaps not optimal, is called:
a) a maximizer.
b) a minimizer.
c) a satisficer.
d) clinically depressed.
Ans: c
Feedback: See page 447