Academic Concept Worksheet 4

Other Factors that Can Inhibit Our Ability to Recognize Ethical Issues

Ethical Short-cuts: The Impact of Heuristics on our Ability to Recognize Ethical Situations as They Emerge

1. What are heuristics?

 Shortcut methods of solving problems

 People have a tendency to use these in solving problems and making decisions

2. Why do people use heuristics?

 Fast, easy, often accurate but not always)

3. In what way is the use of heuristics problematic to the recognition of ethical situations?

 If you rely on heuristics, you might not notice ethical situations emerging OR might think that certain
ethical situations are much less likely to occur than they actually are

4. Give three examples of cognitive heuristics.

 Availability
 If you cannot think of/recall a readily available example of something, you think it is less likely
to happen
 Vividness Criterion
 If we have a vivid image of something we tend to think it's more likely than if all we have is
pallid (boring, statistical) data
 bbbbbbbggggggg vs. bgbbgbgggbgbbg vs. bgbgbgbgbgbgbg
 middle seems representative of what we typically hear about
 this reasoning is not necessarily accurate (probability of boy or girl is about equal)
 each of the 3 strings is equally probable

4. How can we counteract the potential negative consequences of heuristics?

 tend to pay attention to info that confirms the theory we already hold (and not pay attention to info that
disconfirms the theory we already hold)