新视野大学英语第四版Unit1sectionB教案

Unit1 Section B

Why do smart people do dumb things Objectives:

To master the reading skill

To understand the text

To practice the phrases and patterns

To learn about writing a survey report

Contents :

Warming up

Reading skills

Text study

Comparative study

Unit Project

Warming-up

Lead-in video watching

1. What are the two examples of Sunk Costs Fallacy

2. According to the speaker, what is Sunk Costs Fallacy

Background Information

Cognitive Bias- A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations, leading to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. Many cognitive biases (认知偏差) are often studied for how they affect business and economic decisions and how they affect scientific and experimental researches.

Fundamental Attribution Error-A Fundamental Attribution Error (基本归因错误) is a cognitive bias in social psychology. It refers to the tendency to judge a person in an unpleasant situation in a bad light and attribute his behavior to internal causes and qualities rather than consider the situation or circumstances that may have caused the person to behave in that manner. But, if we ourselves made the same errors, we would easily attribute the causes to external factors.

Confirmation Bias-A Confirmation Bias (确定性偏差) is a cognitive bias whereby one tends to notice and look for information that confirms one’s existing beliefs, whilst ignoring anything that contradicts those beliefs. It is a type of selective thinking. For example: After having bought a piece of clothing, you will look for the same clothing in a more expensive store to confirm that you have bought a bargain.

Reading skills

Skimming is a method of rapidly moving the eyes over a text with the purpose of getting the

main idea or a general overview of its content. For example, many people skim read a newspaper

article just to get a quick overview, or a text to see whether it’s worth reading in detail. The key

word for skimming is “general”.

Steps to help you to skim an article

1 Read the title –it is the shortest possible summary of the content of the article.

2 Read the introduction or lead-in paragraph(s).

3 Read any sub-headings, and identify the relationships between them.

4 Read the first sentence of each remaining paragraph; the main idea of most paragraphs appears in the first sentence

Practice

Skim Text B to find answers to the following questions.

1 What is this text mainly about

2 What common cognitive biases can cause

smart people to make bad decisions

3 How can we avoid being affected by

various types of cognitive biases when

making a decision

Text Study

Text Comprehension

What is the traditional view about smart people according to Paragraph 1 (Para. 1) Smart people, by virtue of what they’ve learned, will formulate better decisions.

What is the most typical characteristic of the fundamental attribution error

One of the most common biases is what is known as the fundamental attribution error. Through this people attribute the ______________ to _____________ and their own to ________________, subconsciously considering their own characters to be ________.

What will you be affected if you are only interested in evidence that is in agreement with your own belief

The confirmation bias.

4. When does the overconfidence bias usually occur

Overconfidence bias most frequently comes into play in areas where someone has _______ ____________________________ –estimating how many people are in a crowded plaza, for example, or how likely it will rain.