AP Psychology Thinking

After the student council election, a friend tells you he could have guessed who would be elected president. What psychological phenomenon might this illustrate?

• Common sense

• Critical thinking

• Hindsight bias

• Overconfidence

• Perceiving order in random events

The tendency to exaggerate the correctness or accuracy of our beliefs and predictions is called

• hindsight bias.

• overconfidence.

• critical thinking.

• skepticism.

• reliability.

To find Tabasco sauce in a large grocery store, you could systematically search every shelf in every store aisle. This best illustrates problem solving by means of:

• the availability heuristic.

• functional fixedness.

• an algorithm.

• the representativeness heuristic

Pablo vainly searches for a screwdriver while failing to recognize that a readily available coin in his pocket would turn the screw. His oversight best illustrates:

• functional fixedness.

• the availability heuristic.

• belief perseverance.

• the representativeness heuristic.

A defense attorney emphasizes to a jury that her client works full-time, supports his family, and enjoys leisure-time hobbies. Although none of this information is relevant to the trial, it is designed to make the defendant appear to be a typical member of the local community. The lawyer is most clearly attempting to take advantage of:

• confirmation bias.

• functional fixedness.

• belief perseverance.

• the representativeness heuristic.

Advertisers know that a thirty-three percent discount sounds like a better deal than a discount of one third. This best illustrates:

• framing.

• belief bias.

• representativeness heuristics.

• confirmation bias.

Maintaining one's conceptions even after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited is known as:

• the representativeness heuristic.

• belief perserverance

• confirmation bias.

• functional fixedness.

The use of heuristics rather than algorithms is most likely to

• save time in arriving at solutions to problems.
• avoid the issue of functional fixedness.
• yield more accurate solutions to problems.
• involve greater reliance on language skills.

Confirmation bias refers to the tendency to:

• Allow preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning
• Cling to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited
• Search randomly through alternative solutions when problem solving
• Look for information that is consistent with one’s beliefs

A strategy in which the likelihood of an event is estimated on the basis of how easily other instances of the event are available in memory is called the:

• Availability heuristic
• Availability algorithm
• Representativeness heuristic
• Representativeness algorithm