ii. biases in intuition and perception
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II. Biases in Intuition and Perception. Why not rely only on intuition?. A. Introduction. Where does intuition/common sense start? Perceptions - Noticing, attending to, interpreting, remembering stimuli...experiences YOU encounter Are these carbon copies of “reality”? Consider this: - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
II. Biases in Intuition and Perception
Why not rely only on intuition?
A. Introduction• Where does intuition/common sense start?
– Perceptions - Noticing, attending to, interpreting, remembering stimuli...experiences YOU encounter
– Are these carbon copies of “reality”?
• Consider this:– How many stimuli could you focus on at this
moment?– 50,000 facts about every topic!– 500 times the Encyclopedia Britannica!
B. Perceiving our world
• How do we manage to navigate our perceptions?
• 1. Tendency to categorize– a. Schemas:
Cognitive structures that represent knowledge about a concept, event, person, etc,
Categories then make us efficient – but...
B. Perceiving our world.
• Folk
• Croak
• Soak
• Folk
• Croak
• Soak
B. Perceiving our world.
• Can lead to biases...• 2. Biases in perceptions and thinking:
Importance of expectations.“filter” or “lens”a. Assimilation: Interpreting new information in terms of our existing beliefs.– “Rebellion is a good thing”
B. Perceiving our world.• Quick demo….
• b. Confirmation Bias:
Tendency to search for information that confirms our preconceptions (expectations).– Darley & Gross (1983): “Hannah Study”
B. Perceiving our World
• d. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
People’s expectations lead them to act in ways that cause others to confirm those expectations.– Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968):
“Bloomers Study”
B. Perceiving our world• e. Belief Perseverance:
Persistence of one’s initial conceptions, even when they are proved incorrect.– Anderson et al., (1980): Firefighter Study
• Conclude: Why is intuition problematic?
• Based on perceptions - which can be biased due to our tendency to be efficient processors of stimuli (i.e. we use “short cuts’ - categories and expectations)
C. Can we accurately infer our own behavior?
• Nisbett & Wilson (1977):
“Pantyhose Study”
D. Problem Solving
• 1. Algorithm:
Step-by-step exhaustive procedure, using trial and error to solve problems.
• 2. Heuristics:
Simple, rule-of-thumb strategies for solving problems.
C. Problem Solving
• 2. Heuristics
• HHTTHTTH HHHHTTTT
George…
a. Representativeness: Making a judgement about something based on how similar it is to a typical case in its category.
- may lead to ignoring base-rate information.
• 2. Heuristics
Which is more common or more likely?...
b. Availability: Judge the likelihood of something happening in terms of how easy examples come to mind.
• Important to think critically about psychology and how we interpret our world– Can’t rely ONLY on intuition, common sense, or folk
wisdom...
– When perceiving our own and others’ behavior, we are vulnerable to biases.
• However, those biases serve us well most of the time.
• Make us capable of dealing with the enormous amount of stimuli and information we encounter.
Conclusions.....
• Psychology is:– Very broad and diverse.– Findings/conclusions not always obvious.– A science (more on this to come)
• Why not rely on intuition and individual observations/common sense?
Conclusions from yesterday...• People’s perceptions are biased.
- To be able to navigate through our social worlds, we need short-cuts (for efficiency)
- or - categories (e.g., schemas) - to quickly make sense of stimuli.
- Expectations provide powerful “short-cuts” that influence:
- what (how) we notice, interpret, and remember information.
- how we solve problems.