Thought Questions

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1. Before reading Bazerman and Moore’s discussion in Chapter 3 of biases that result from the inappropriate use of heuristics in making inferential judgments, complete the seven problems that head each of the sections relating to the availability and representativeness heuristics (pp. 34-46). Then read the discussion of each. In how many cases did you make the sort of misjudgment Bazerman and Moore point out in their discussion of each problem? Did the explanations of the appropriate and inappropriate responses make sense to you? Were there any items for which you did not understand the explanation? Are there any items for which you chose the wrong response according to Bazerman and Moore, but for which you continue to think you were correct? Why, in that case, do you think you were correct?


2. Of the seven biases Bazerman and Moore discuss on pp. 34-46, select one that resonates with your own experience or for which you can recall a recent example that you think may have contributed to an erroneous inference that, in turn, led to an unfortunate, or at least unwarranted, decision. An example might be something like a decision not to take a course in math on the grounds that it was likely to be boring--where the inference seems to reflect an overestimate of the percentage of math courses that are boring relative to courses in general--only later to discover that virtually everyone who took the course found it to be quite interesting. Identify the bias leading to the inference, classify it, discuss the reasons why you may have had the bias, and then note how you eventually determined that you had made a poor decision that grew from an inference affected by the bias.