The purpose of this assignment is to help you better understand cognitive biases and scientific thinking principles. You will practice identifying instances of biases in your everyday reasoning. You will consider how scientific thinking principles can be used to counteract cognitive biases.
300-500 words
Be sure to answer ALL 4 questions.
Consider the following cognitive biases described in Ch. 8:
Availability Heuristic
Representativeness Heuristic
Framing
Hindsight Bias
Confirmation Bias
Imagine you are shopping for a laptop. Describe how each of the biases above might play a role in your thinking or in the thinking of other people involved (e.g., the salesman, your parents, etc.). Give one good example for each bias (5 total). First, explain the bias and then describe how it is involved in the example. (10 points)
Choose one of the “Psychomythology” boxes in your textbook from the list below. What is the myth? Describe how at least one of the cognitive biases above could have given rise to the myth. (4 points)
Ch. 4 Psychic healing of chronic pain
Ch. 6 Are we what we eat?
Ch. 7 Smart pills
Describe how scientists used scientific skepticism and scientific thinking principles to debunk the myth. You should explicitly discuss at least two of the 6 Scientific Thinking Principles introduced in Chapter 1 (Figure 1.7). (4 points)
Why do we have cognitive biases, if they so often lead us astray? (2 points)
