Deck 1: A: Psychology and Scientific Thinking

Question 1

Explain how the principles of critical thinking can assist a person in making more informed-and hopefully more accurate-decisions in one's everyday life.

Answer 1

Answers will vary but should include at least four of the following ideas for full credit.
--The principle of falsifiability helps to inform us of the kinds of questions that we can ask and to which we can actually find a scientific answer.
--The principle of parsimony reminds us to focus on the simplest explanation with the fewest assumptions as being the best.
--The principles of replicability and extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence address the ability to verify other people's claims (we need concurrence from independent sources)and that this is especially true when our claims contradict what is "known."
--Extraordinary claims also require stronger evidence because they are asking us to put aside our current beliefs in favour of a new theory that explains both the known and the new information we have gathered.
--We need to have gathered the evidence in such a way that our explanation/understanding is the only possible rational reason for the data (ruling out rival hypotheses).
--We must remember that just because two things are related doesn't mean that one caused the other (third variable explains each,and the relationship we observe comes from that).

Question 2

Illustrate how the confirmation bias has created a problem for a friend or family member in the past.

Answer 2

Answers will vary but should include the following information for full credit.
--Student should mention the basic idea of the confirmation bias (seek out supportive evidence but fail to seek out,ignore,or distort contradictory information).
--Student should clearly and correctly identify a situation where they observed an individual using the confirmation bias and how the person came to an erroneous conclusion.

Question 3

Demonstrate a time that you fell victim to at least one of the following logical fallacies (bandwagon fallacy,emotional reasoning fallacy,or not me fallacy)and how it negatively affected the quality of your decision on that occasion.

Answer 3

Answers will vary but should contain the following information for full credit.
--Student clearly and correctly identifies at least one of the fallacies listed above in his/her answer,according to the definitions provided.
The bandwagon fallacy is the error of assuming that a claim is correct just because many people believe it.
The emotional reasoning fallacy is the error of using our emotions as guides for evaluating the validity of a claim (some psychologists also refer to this error as the affect heuristic;Slovic & Peters,2006).
The not me fallacy is the error of believing that we're immune from errors in thinking that afflict other people.
--Student provides supportive detail to show how the fallacy negatively affected them.