How did you do on the
bouncing ball count test in
the video?
Do you think the
directions influenced the
way you interpreted the
sense data?
Look at the rabbit.
Can you see the skull?
Ready? 1, 2, 3
Look at the duck.
Now look at the duck and
rabbit at the same time.
Can you see the lady
sitting at a makeup
table?
What conclusions are you
drawing about the ways
our expectations influence
our perceptions?
What is context?
How does context
influence our judgments
and interpretations?
“What you see depends
mainly on what you look
for.” –Stanislaus Jerzy Lee
What is a cognitive bias?
“Unconscious features of
human psychology [that]
skew our apprehension of
reality and interfere with
our ability to think clearly,
process information
accurately, and reason
objectively.”
Belief Bias.
“Tendency to evaluate
reasoning by how
believable its conclusion
seems.”
All college students are
human beings. Some
human beings are CR
students. Therefore, some
college students are CR
students.
What’s wrong with the
reasoning?
All college students are
human beings. Some
human beings are less
than six months old.
Therefore, some college
students are less than six
months old.
Why is the flaw in
reasoning easier to see
here?
“Assigning a probability to a
type of event on the basis of
how often one thinks of
events of that type.”
Increase in shark attacks?
Increase in school shootings?
Has violent crime increased
in the US in the last century?
“The inclination we may
have to assume that our
attitudes and those held by
people around us are
shared by society at large.”
“It’s obvious
that….Everyone knows
that….No one could believe
that….”
Why do we assume that
most of the time people
will see what we see and
think what we think?
“Unconscious
tendency to align
one’s thinking with
that of other people.”
How does something
become popular?
Why do we all adhere
roughly to dominate
fashions/styles?
“The tendency to weigh
negative info more heavily
than positive info.”
Why do we find it easier to
be negative than positive?
The first piece of info you
receive creates
expectations.
The price tag on the car
says $10,000 and you
bargain the dealer to
$7,500. Did you get a good
deal?
If I told you on the first day
of class that we’d have 10
exams would feel better
when I agreed to lower
that number to 4?
•
What are we looking for?
True, Justified Belief