1. Invitation To Psychology
Carol Wade and Carol Tavris
PowerPoint Presentation by
H. Lynn Bradman
Metropolitan Community College-Omaha
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

2. Thinking and Intelligence
Prepared by Michael J. Renner, Ph.D.
These slides ©2002 Prentice Hall Psychology Publishing.
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3. Thinking and Intelligence
Thought: Using What We Know
Reasoning Rationally
Barriers to Reasoning Rationally
Intelligence
The Origins of Intelligence
Animal Minds
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4. Thought: Using What We Know
The Elements of Cognition
How Conscious Is Thought?
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5. The Elements of Cognition
Concept: Mental category that groups objects, relations, activities, abstractions, or qualities having common properties.
Proposition: A unit of meaning that is made up of concepts and expresses a single idea.
Mental Image: Representation that mirrors or resembles the thing it represents.
Cognitive Schema: An integrated mental network of knowledge, beliefs, and expectations concerning a particular topic or aspect of the world.
Figures from page 191 of
Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

6. How Conscious is Thought?
Subconscious Processes: Mental processes occurring outside of conscious awareness but accessible to consciousness when necessary.
Nonconscious Processes: Mental processes occurring outside of and not available to conscious awareness.
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Reasoning Rationally
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Reasoning Rationally
Formal Reasoning: Algorithms and Logic
Informal Reasoning: Heuristics and Dialectical Thinking
Reflective Judgment
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Formal Logic
Deductive Reasoning: A tool of formal logic in which a conclusion necessarily follows from a set of observations or propositions (premises).
Figures from pages of
Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

10. Wade and Tavris © 2005 Prentice Hall
Formal Logic
Inductive Reasoning: A tool of formal logic in which a conclusion probably follows from a set of observations or propositions or premises, but could be false.
Figures from pages of
Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

11. Wade and Tavris © 2005 Prentice Hall
Informal Reasoning
Heuristic:
A rule of thumb that suggests a course of action or guides problem solving but does not guarantee an optimal solution.
Dialectical Reasoning:
A process in which opposing facts or ideas are weighed and compared, with a view to determining the best solution or resolving differences.
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12. Barriers to Reasoning Rationally
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13. Barriers to Reasoning Rationally
Exaggerating the Improbable
Avoiding Loss
The Confirmation Bias
Biases Due to Mental Sets
The Hindsight Bias
The Need for Cognitive Consistency
Overcoming Our Cognitive Biases
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14. Exaggerating the Improbable
Availability Heuristic:
The tendency to judge the probability of an event by how easy it is to think of examples or instances.
For example, most people overestimate the odds of dying in a plane crash.
Dying in an automobile accident is far more likely.
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Avoiding Loss
People try to minimize risks and losses when making decisions.
Responses to the same choice will differ based on whether outcome is framed as gain or loss.
In the example, outcomes are the same in Problems 1 and 2.
Figure 6.01 from
Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

16. Wade and Tavris © 2005 Prentice Hall
The Confirmation Bias
Confirmation Bias: The tendency to look for or pay attention only to information that confirms one’s own beliefs.
Test this rule: If a card has a vowel on one side, it has an even number on the other side.
Which 2 cards to turn over? E J 6 7
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17. Biases Due to Mental Sets
Mental Set: A tendency to solve problems using procedures that worked before on similar problems.
Mental sets help us solve most problems efficiently.
Not helpful when a problem calls for fresh insights or a new approach.
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The Nine-Dot Problem
Connect all 9 dots
Use only 4 lines
Do not lift your pencil from the page after you begin drawing
Figure 7.9a from:
Kassin, S. (2001). Psychology, third edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
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The Hindsight Bias
Hindsight Bias: The tendency to overestimate one’s ability to have predicted an event once the outcome is known.
Also known as the “I knew it all along” phenomenon.
“The older they get the better they were when they were younger.”
Jim Bouton, professional baseball player
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20. Need for Cognitive Consistency
Cognitive Dissonance:
A state of tension that occurs when a person simultaneously holds two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent, or when a person’s belief is inconsistent with his or her behavior.
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Intelligence
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Intelligence
Measuring Intelligence: The Psychometric Approach
Dissecting Intelligence: The Cognitive Approach
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Intelligence
Intelligence: An inferred characteristic of an individual, usually defined as the ability to profit from experience, acquire knowledge, think abstractly, act purposefully, or adapt to changes in the environment.
g factor: A general intellectual ability assumed by many theorists to underlie specific mental abilities and talents.
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24. The Psychometric Approach
IQ scores are distributed “normally”
Bell-shaped curve
Very high and low scores are rare
68% of people have IQ between
99.7% between
Figure 6.02 from
Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

25. The Cognitive Approach
Metacognition: The knowledge or awareness of one’s own cognitive processes.
Tacit Knowledge: Strategies for success that are not explicitly taught but that instead must be inferred.
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26. Sternberg's Triarchic Theory
Components - a.k.a. “Analytic”
Comparing, analyzing, and evaluating.
This type of processes correlates best with IQ.
Experiential - a.k.a. “Creative”
Inventing or designing solutions to new problems.
Transfer skills to new situations.
Contextual - a.k.a. “Practical”
Using (i.e., applying) the things you know in everyday contexts.
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27. The Origins of Intelligence
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28. The Origins of Intelligence
Genes and Intelligence
The Environment and Intelligence
Attitudes, Motivation, and Intellectual Success
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29. Correlations in Siblings’ IQ Scores
IQ scores of siblings were highly correlated, even when they were reared apart.
Identical twins have higher correlations than fraternal twins.
Suggests a genetic link
Figure 6.04 from
Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

30. Explaining Group Differences
Within a group with all treated exactly the same, differences may reflect genetics.
When one group differs from another, the differences may reflect environmental differences.
Figure from:
Kassin, S. (1998). Psychology, second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Source:
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

31. Environment and Intelligence
Factors associated with reduced IQ:
Poor prenatal care
Malnutrition
Exposure to toxins
Stressful family circumstances
Healthy and stimulating environments can raise IQ, sometimes dramatically.
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33. Attitudes and Intellectual Success
Asian children score higher on standard math tests than American children.
Differences:
Americans are more likely than Asians to believe that math ability is innate.
Americans have far lower standards for their children.
Asian children value education more highly than Americans.
Figure 6.07 from
Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

34. Wade and Tavris © 2005 Prentice Hall
Animal Minds
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Animal Minds
Animal Intelligence
Animals and Language
Thinking About the Thinking of Animals
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Animal Intelligence
Cognitive Ethology: The study of cognitive processes in nonhuman animals.
Studies in cognitive ethology have shown evidence that some animals can
Anticipate future events
Use numbers to label quantities
Coordinate activities with other animals
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Animals and Language
Language is a critical element of human cognition
Many animal species can be taught to communicate in ways that resemble language
Chimpanzees and bonobos converse using American Sign Language and symbol board systems
An African grey parrot has been taught to count, classify, and compare objects using English words
Whether these behaviors are language depends on how you define “language.”
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38. Thinking About Animal Thinking
Anthropomorphism: The tendency to falsely attribute human qualities to nonhuman beings.
Anthropocentrism: The tendency to think, mistakenly, that human beings have nothing in common with other animals.
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