ALHT106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Scoliosis, Dyslexia, Monty Hall Problem
ALHT tutorial week 7 Intelligence
Cognitive Biases and Heuristics
- Heuristics cause cognitive biases to arise
- Confirmation bias when we use stereotypes to label people
TASK 1
- Answer is A
- It is impossible for B to be more probable than A because B is a conjoined term
containing A
- It is impossible for B to have a higher probability than A because B contains A
- The simple logic of this is typically missed, because we have an intuitive bias towards
matching the content of stereotypes
Representativeness Heuristic
- It is important to be aware of the inherent biases in the representativeness heuristic,
because it is a. key example of how our tendency to seek out confirmation of our
pre-existing stereotyped can overwhelm even simple reasoning
- How do you think stereotypes expectations might creep into judgements of
likelihood you may need to make with clients?
oThe elderly stereotyped to be grumpy, unmotivated, unable
oDifferent religious groups and cultural backgrounds
oThe disabled
Green and Blue Taxis
- In this example, participants usually experience an anchoring effect, based on
understanding that the witness’s accuracy is known to be 80%, so they usually
estimate the probability as being at or close to that percentage
- They know that there’ll be some false positives, but neglect how the baseline
number of taxis affect this
- Base-rate neglect
oThe 20% error rate of seeing Blues as Greens is actually greater than the 80%
rate of correctly picking a green taxi as green
oTry to remember the influence of base-rates on probability estimates when
considering efficacy rates of therapies
oAs part of your scientific literacy in understand the results of clinical studies,
it is always important to keep number quoting the efficacy of new treatments
in the context of
Monty Hall Problem
- If you ever doubt the value of health science research methods, which meticulously
and painstakingly calculate cumulative and conditional probabilities when comparing
treatment problems
- Even experienced professionals are prone to these intuitive mistakes, so it is always
better to double-check their numbers
Cultural Biases in Tests
- Need to make sure any tests we use are current and relevant to our patients today
and that there is no cultural bias in them in order to avoid skewed results
- Flynn Effect = rise in IQ over time
- This is looking at the role ability testing and test bias played (and continue to play, in
some cases) in creating and maintaining stereotypes about groups
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