List and identify three problematic heuristics that are associated with informal reasoning. Give an example of each.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Examples for the following will differ from student to student.The anchoring heuristic (or anchoring bias) occurs when a person estimates the probability of an event by adjusting his or her existing estimate rather than creating an independent evaluation based on new information. A variation of this is often seen in pricing estimates, when a starting price is used as a base from which to adjust up or down.The representativeness heuristic occurs when people assume that something belongs in a certain class based on how similar it is to other items in that class. As an example, if you were to see man with large colorful tattoos all over his arms and neck, would you assume that he was part of a biker gang or that he was an award-winning physician? Either could be correct, but if you lean toward biker gang, that demonstrates the representativeness heuristic.The availability heuristic occurs when a person judges the likelihood of a given event or the correctness of a hypothesis based on how easily he or she can think of that event or hypothesis. As a result, a person may be far more frightened of a roller coaster after hearing a news story about a roller coaster accident that happened several states away. Even though it is a very uncommon and unlikely event, the newness or immediacy of that information (or its availability in one's mind) affects how one judges riding a roller coaster today.