Check your understanding of heuristics and tendencies in decision making by trying to identify the quirks in reasoning apparent in the following examples. Write the letter for the cognitive phenomenon at work in the space on the left, choosing from the following: (a) the availability heuristic, (b) the representativeness heuristic, (c) the tendency to ignore base rates, and (d) the conjunction fallacy. You can find the answers in Appendix A. __________ Maurice and Whitney are the proud parents of four girls, but they still yearn for a baby boy. In contemplating whether to try to have another child in the hopes of adding a boy to the family, they figure, "What the heck, the laws of probability are in our favor. The probability of having five girls in a row has to be pretty low. Let's go for it."

Step by step solution

01

Understand the biases

Before we answer, let's briefly understand the four biases: (a) Availability heuristic - People tend to judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily they can think of examples. (b) Representativeness heuristic - Individuals tend to judge the probability of an event by finding a similar event and assuming that the probabilities will be similar. (c) Tendency to ignore base rates - People tend to ignore the background information or base rates while making a judgment. (d) Conjunction fallacy - When people incorrectly assume that the probability of a specific event is higher than the combined probabilities of separate events.

02

Analyze the example

In the given example, Maurice and Whitney are making a decision based on their belief that the probability of having five girls in a row is low, so they think the next child is more likely to be a boy. However, the probability of having a boy or a girl in each pregnancy is actually independent of previous outcomes. They are ignoring that the base rate of having a boy or a girl is approximately 50%, regardless of the previous births in their family.

03

Identify the bias

Since Maurice and Whitney are ignoring the base rate (50% chance of having a boy or a girl) and are influenced by their previous experience of having four girls, the best fitting cognitive bias in this example is: Answer: (c) The tendency to ignore base rates

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