Final Project Report University Institute of Management Sciences (UIMS), Arid Agriculture University, Ra alpindi!

Submitted to:
Mr. Waqas Ahmad

Submitted By:
Ibrar Ahmad M.Rehan Abid M .Shoaib Qureshi Muhammad Usman

SUMMAR"# A Mac$ine for %umping to &onclusions

A Machine for Jumping to Conclusions is also known as: quick decision, faster to conclusions. Jumping to conclusions is a form of cognitive distortion. Often, a person will make a negative assumption when it is actually not supported y any facts. !n some cases misinterpretation of what a su "ect has sensed, i.e., the incorrect decoding of oncoming messages can come a out due to "umping to conclusions. #his can often e ecause the same sign can have multiple meanings. An e$ample given in Communicating for %esults: A &uide for 'usiness and the (rofessions is of an employee avoiding eye contact while eing questioned over a missing item it may suggest their guilt to the crime, ut it may also suggest other things such as their em arrassment at their integrity eing questioned, or even a )gesture of respect for. authority). *ven if the questionee shows more signs of guilt, such as sweating and avoiding answers, one is still making an assumption when they link these symptoms to the theft. #hese assumptions are e$amples of "umping to conclusions, and could have resulted in fau$ pas if pursued further without the evidence to ack it up. +hile we all "ump to conclusion y making inferences and assumptions, and quite often a "o requires that one acts upon them, in those cases one is making a calculated risk , they are aware they are asing their decisions on an assumption which has a degree of risk associated with it. Mistakes are much more likely when people are unaware that they have "umped to conclusions, and instead think that their assumptions are actually facts. !t is easy for interviewers to "ump to conclusions, often resulting in a )costly hiring error due to false inference). Asking for clarification is a good way to help investigate inferences further. An e$ample of "umping to conclusions is when one makes assumptions a out what someone else is going to say, often y cutting them off with the words )! know what you-re going to say). .aying things like )wow, gees, and what a shame) can make one come across as more interested in looking supportive than what the other person is saying. #herefore, assuming that a story,teller

wants overly,compassionate responses can have its downsides, especially if they seem non, genuine and only maintained in order to uphold some kind of social e$pectation. +orking out what conte$t a phrase is eing used in can help avoid one "umping to conclusions. !n order to prevent the wrongful assessment of children, o servation is an essential part of an early years worker-s "o . Multiple o servations, of the child reacting in different circumstances, should e carried out to help show a conte$t for certain symptoms and allow then to work out if they are part of a larger issue. Contrary to what people may think, medical professionals can, and often do, "ump to conclusions. Jerome &roopman, author of /ow 0octors #hink, says that )most incorrect diagnoses are due to physicians- misconceptions of their patients, not technical mistakes like a faulty la test). Many doctors "ump to conclusions in the following ways: they assume the patient will state all relevant symptoms 1or are forced to make an assumption due to thinking that seeking further personal information may lead to em arrassment2, they assume the patient will not want to undergo any unpleasant 1al eit effective2 treatment, they assume the patient is a hypochondriac and therefore not take their complaints seriously, or they make a diagnosis even though they have not heard3understood all of the complaint and for whatever reason do not ask for clarification.

Spea'ing of %umping to &onclusion

!n psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form "udgments and make decisions. #hey are mental shortcuts that usually involve focusing on one aspect of a comple$ pro lem and ignoring others. #hese rules work well under most circumstances, ut they can lead to systematic deviations from logic, pro a ility or rational choice theory. #he resulting errors are called )cognitive iases) and many different types have een documented. #hese have een shown to affect people-s choices in situations like valuing a house or deciding the outcome of a legal case. /euristics usually govern automatic, intuitive "udgments ut can also e used as deli erate mental strategies when working from limited information.

(o %udgment (appen
#here is infinite questions you can answer, whether they are questions someone else asks or questions you ask yourself. And there is unlimited attri utes you can evaluate. #here are two systems of assesments: System ) receives questions or generates them: in either case it directs attention and searches memory to find the answers. System * operates differently. !t continuously monitors what is going on outside and inside the mind, and continuously generates assessments of various aspects of the situation without specific intention and with little or no effort. #hese basic assessments play an important role in intuitive "udgment, ecause they are easily su stituted for more difficult questions .#his is the essential idea of the heuristics and iases approach.

+asic Assessments
.ystem 4 has een shaped y evolution to provide a continuous assessment of the main pro lems that an organism must solve to survive: /ow are things going5 !s there a threat or a ma"or opportunity5 !s everything normal5 .hould ! approach or avoid5 #he questions are perhaps less urgent for a human in a city environment than for a villager. 6or a specific e$ample of a asic assessment, consider the a ility to discriminate friend from enemy at a glance. #he shape of the face provides the hint for assessing dominance. #he accuracy of face reading is far from perfect: round chins are not a relia le indicator of meekness, and smiles can 1to some e$tent2 e faked. (eople "udge competence y com ining the two dimensions of strength and trust worthiness. #here is no evidence that these facial features actually predict how well politicians will perform in office. 'ut studies of the rain7s response to winning and losing candidates show that we are iologically predisposed to re"ect candidates who lack the attri utes we value8in this research, losers evoked stronger indications of 1negative2 emotional response. #his is call a judgment heuristic.

.ystem 4 are particularly likely to play a large role. .ystem 4 depends on the asic assessments that are routinely carried out as part of the perception of events and the comprehension of messages. #hese assessments include computations of similarity and representativeness, attri utions of causality, and evaluations of the availa ility of associations. A glance provides an immediate impression of many features of the display. 9ou know that the two towers are equally tall and that they are more similar to each other than the tower on the left is to the array of locks in the middle. /owever, you do not immediately know that the num er of locks in the left,hand tower is the same as the num er of locks arrayed on the floor, and you have no impression of the height of the tower that you could uild from them. #o confirm that the num ers are the same, you would need to count the two sets of locks and compare the results, an activity that only .ystem : can carry out.

Intensity Matc$ing
;uestions a out your happiness, the president7s popularity, the proper punishment of financial evildoers, and the future prospects of a politician share an important characteristic: they all refer to an underlying dimension of intensity or amount, which permits the use of the word more: more happy, more popular, more severe, or more powerful 1for a politician2. 6or e$ample, a candidate7s political future can range from the low of <.he will e defeated in the primary= to a high of <.he will someday e president of the >nited .tates.= /ere we encounter a new aptitude of .ystem 4. An underlying scale of intensity allows matching across diverse dimensions. !f crimes were colors, murder would e a deeper shade of red than theft. !f crimes were e$pressed as music, mass murder would e played fortissimo while accumulating unpaid parking tickets would e a faint pianissimo. And of course you have similar feelings a out the intensity of punishments. !n classic e$periments, people ad"usted the loudness of a sound to the severity of crimes? other people ad"usted loudness to the severity of legal punishments. !f you heard two notes, one for the crime and one for the punishment, you would feel a sense of in"ustice if one tone was much louder than the other.

,$e Mental S$otgun

.ystem 4 carries out many computations at any one time. 6ew of these are routine assessments that go on continuously. +henever your eyes are open, your rain computes a three,dimensional representation of what is in your field of vision, complete with the shape of o "ects, their position in space, and their identity. !n contrast to these routine assessments, other computations are undertaken only when needed. 9ou do not maintain a continuous evaluation of how happy or wealthy you are, the occasional "udgments are voluntary. #hey occur only when you intend them to do so. 9ou do not automatically count the num er of sylla les of every word you read, ut you can do it if you so choose. /owever, the control over intended computations is far from precise. +e often compute much more than we want or need. ! call this e$cess computation the mental shotgun. !t-s impossi le to aim at a single point with a shotgun ecause it shoots pellets that scatter, and it seems almost equally difficult for .ystem 4 not to do more than .ystem : charges it to do. Spea'ing of %udgment <*valuating people as attractive or not is a asic assessment. 9ou do that automatically whether or not you want to, and it influences you.= <#here are circuits in the rain that evaluate dominance from the shape of the face. /e looks the part for a leadership role.= <#he punishment won7t feel "ust unless its intensity matches the crime. Just like you can match the loudness of a sound to the rightness of a light.= <#his was a clear instance of a mental shotgun. /e was asked whether he thought the company was financially sound, ut he couldn7t forget that he likes their product.