1.

availability heuristic cognitive shortcut that occurs when we make judgments on the
basis of how easily we can call to mind what we perceive as relevant instances of a
phenomenon.
2. base rate refers to the prevalence of an event or characteristic within its population of
events or characteristics.
3. bounded rationality belief that we are rational, but within limits.
4. categorical perception discontinuous categories of speech sounds.
5. categorical syllogism a deductive argument in which the relationship among the three
terms in the two premises involves categorical membership.
6. causal inferences how people make judgments about whether something causes
something else.
7. conditional reasoning occurs when the reasoner must draw a conclusion based on an
if-then proposition.
8. confirmation bias the tendency to seek confirmation rather than disconfirmation of
what we already believe.
9. deductive reasoning the process of reasoning from one or more general statements
regarding what is known to reach a logically certain conclusion.
10. deductive validity logical soundness.
11. elimination by aspects occurs when we eliminate alternatives by focusing on aspects
of each alternative, one at a time.
12. fallacy erroneous reasoning.
13. heuristics informal, intuitive, speculative strategies that sometimes lead to an effective
solution and sometimes do not.
14. hindsight bias when we look at a situation retrospectively, we believe we easily can
see all the signs and events leading up to a particular outcome.
15. illusory correlation occurs when we tend to see particular events or particular
attributes and categories as going together because we are predisposed to do so.
16. inductive reasoning the process of reasoning from specific facts or observations to
reach a likely conclusion that may explain the facts.
17. judgment and decision making used to select from among choices or to evaluate
opportunities.
18. mental models knowledge structures that individuals construct to understand and
explain their experiences; an internal representation of information that corresponds
analogously with whatever is being represented.
19. overconfidence an individual’s overvaluation of her or his own skills, knowledge, or
judgment.
20. pragmatic reasoning schemas general organizing principles or rules related to
particular kinds of goals, such as permissions, obligations, or causations.
21. schemas mental frameworks for representing knowledge that encompass an array of
interrelated concepts in a meaningful organization.
22. premises propositions about which arguments are made.
23. proposition basically an assertion, which may be either true or false.
24. reasoning the process of drawing conclusions from principles and from evidence.
25. representativeness occurs when we judge the probability of an uncertain event
according to (1) its obvious similarity to or representation of the population from
which it is derived and (2) the degree to which it reflects the salient features of the
process by which it is generated (such as randomness).
26. satisficing occurs when we consider options one by one, and then we select an option
as soon as we find one that is satisfactory or just good enough to meet our minimum
level of acceptability.
27. subjective probability a calculation based on the individual’s estimates of likelihood,
rather than on objective statistical computations.
28. subjective utility a calculation based on the individual’s judged weightings of utility
(value), rather than on objective criteria.
29. syllogisms deductive arguments that involve drawing conclusions from two premises.