Thoughts on week 8

The purpose of the class this week was to review the subjects we have looked at so far, so it was more of a general discussion.

Particular points of interest for me were:

• Role of emotion: this was highlighted as an area that is now being investigated with regard to fast & frugal heuristics. It raises the issue that the use of heuristics may not just be cognitive. A point to be aware of and look into.
• Use of fast & frugal heuristics by judges: again, concern was raised about the use of such heuristics in the domain of decision making by judges. However, one point that wasn't raised is the possibility that judges only use such heuristics when they have reached a certain level of "expertise" in their field and that it may be this level of expertise that allows them to be time effective by using the heuristics. It would be interesting to find out if any research has been done comparing "experienced" and "inexperienced" judges, to see if there is any evidence of difference in the possible use of heuristics.
• Prospect Theory: this is being used to look at how health messages are framed
• Reference points in Prospect Theory can be goals: we came across this concept in previous lectures, but this time the issue was highlighted with regard to marathon runners. Recent research has shown that if they fail to meet a goal they are much unhappier than those who have overachieved on a goal are happier, presumably without regard to any of the actual times that are achieved. This highlights the importance of setting realistic goals (part of the SMART formula used for goal setting) and the emotional effect of not achieving unrealistic goals. Of course, you need to be aware of what are realistic goals, which ties in with the next subject for our groups wiki page, which is overconfidence. One area of this is a link between incompetence and being unaware of your level of incompetence. So if you're failing to meet your goals this might be because you don't know that they are the "wrong goals", so you're feeling bad for not achieving something that you couldn't achieve in the first place. Quite a paradox and must link in some way to self awareness!!