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Reasoning & Problem Solving Kimberley Clow kclow@uwo.ca http://instruct.uwo.ca/psychology/130
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Outline Simple Decisions Formal Logic Errors Attributions Algorithms vs. Heuristics Representaiveness Availability Anchoring Other Effects
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Simple Decisions Decisions about physical differences Psychophysics Subjective experience of magnitude is not identical to the physical magnitude of the stimulus Perception is not the same thing as Sensation Just Noticeable Difference (JND) By how much energy two stimuli must differ for us to notice the difference
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Distance Effect Which is brighter? A lighter or a flashlight A lighter or a spotlight The greater the distance between two stimuli being compared, the faster the decision that they differ
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Different Effects Which dot is higher? Easier decision for A, B, C, or D? Symbolic Comparisons Semantic Congruity Effects
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Formal Logic and Reasoning Syllogisms A syllogism (or categorical syllogism) is a three- statement logical form First two parts are a premise (which are taken to be true), the third part states a conclusion based on those premises Goal: to understand how different kinds of premises can be combined to yield logically true conclusions, and to understand what combinations of premises lead to incorrect conclusions All A are B. All B are C. Therefore all A are C.
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Conditional Reasoning A conditional is an “if-then” statement. The “if” part is the antecedent. The “then” part is the consequent. Example: If pregnant, then a female. Being pregnant is the antecedent. Being female is the consequent.
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Inferences
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Form Errors Using an invalid form denying the antecedent affirming the consequent Illicit conversions Assuming that a conditional is actually a bi-conditional that “if p then q” implies “if q then p.”
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Search Errors Confirmation Bias Tendency to look for evidence that confirms a hypothesis modus ponens Failure to look for evidence that could possibly falsify a hypothesis modus tollens Example The Wason Selection Task
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Wason Selection Task
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What About Uncertainty? Think about understanding behaviour, where causes are not clear or certain Imagine a scenario… A young woman, Jill, carrying a stack of papers trips and the papers fall all over the place. A young man, Jack, helps her retrieve all of her papers. Why did Jack help Jill?
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Basic Terms Attribution the process through which we come to understand the causes of others’ behaviour as well as the causes of our own behaviour Internal Attribution inferring that a particular behaviour demonstrated by an individual was due to dispositional causes External Attribution inferring that the individual’s behaviour was caused by some other factor than his or her dispositions (e.g., situational causes)
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Covariation Principle Explain behaviour according to 3 factors Consistency How does the person react to the same stimulus/event on different occasions? Distinctiveness How does the person respond to other stimuli/events that are similar? Consensus How do other people react to the same stimulus/event?
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Attribution Principles Discounting Principle the role of a given cause in producing a given effect is discounted if other plausible causes are also present Augmentation Principle If both a factor that facilitates the behaviour and a factor that inhibits the behaviour are present, we assign added weight to the facilitative factor
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Fundamental Attribution Error The tendency to underestimate the role of situations overestimate the role of dispositions
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Algorithms vs. Heuristics Algorithm specific rule or solution procedure guaranteed to give the correct answer if followed correctly Heuristic a "rule of thumb" procedure quick, easy, efficient not always appropriate
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Representativeness Heuristic When people estimate the probability of an event by How similar the event is to the population of events it came from Prototype matching Whether the event seems to be similar to the process that produced it
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Category Membership People belong to multiple social groups simultaneously Age, sex, race, nationality, occupation, hobbies, personality, etc. How we perceive people as belonging to social categories depends on their perceived representativeness Subtyping occurs if a person does not fit with pre-existing stereotypes
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Base Rates Marie is very quiet and studious. In her spare time, she takes women’s courses at the university. It is most likely that Marie is A librarian A feminist A librarian and a feminist Do we use base rate information? Lawyer vs. Engineer description (#1)
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Perceptions of Chance Which super-lotto ticket would you prefer? 7, 12, 18, 24, 33, 45 or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 The representativeness heuristic biases our perceptions of chance (#2) e.g., gambler’s fallacy
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Availability Heuristic We base our judgements of frequency on how available things are in our memory Biased by what we pay attention to or code into memory Events that are common are usually easier to think of than events that are less common because we have had more experience with them
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Why Does This Occur? Some events are easier to retrieve from memory e.g., words with “r” (#3) Some events are easier to imagine e.g., shark attack vs. falling airplane (#4) Exposure to a biased sample of events Selective exposure to events False Consensus Effect
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Forms of the Availability Heuristic The Saliency Bias The salience or prominence of information determines whether we notice it and how much we pay attention to it Exerts greater influence on our judgement Egocentric/Self-Centered Bias The tendency for people to overestimate their responsibility for jointly produced outcomes Who does more housework?
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Anchoring When making a judgement, we begin with an initial value, guess, or starting point called the anchor, and then we adjust our estimate from that anchor We don’t adjust away from anchors sufficiently
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Self-Enhancement Biases Self-Serving Bias the tendency to attribute our positive outcomes to internal causes but our negative outcomes to external factors Unrealistic Optimism Bias the tendency to predict more optimistic future outcomes for ourselves than for others Better-Than-Average-Bias the tendency to rate ourselves as better than our average peer leadership question (#5)
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The Simulation Heuristic Involves a mental construction or imagining of possible outcomes a forecasting of the possibilities of how some event will turn out A forecasting of how an event might have turned out under different circumstances Imagine possible outcomes if Germany had developed the atomic bomb before the U.S.?
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The Undoing Heuristic A version of the simulation heuristic involving the undoing of some outcome by changing the events that led up to it Uses Counterfactual Reasoning When a line of reasoning deliberately contradicts the facts of what happened Asking “what if”?
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Hindsight Bias The after-the-fact judgment that some event was very likely to happen, even though it wasn’t predicted beforehand A bias in which otherwise plausible outcomes are now less easy to imagine than the outcome that actually happened
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Why Use Heuristics? Certain limitations force us to use heuristics over algorithms Limited domain knowledge or insufficient mental models Naïve Physics Limitations in processing resources People stereotype more when they are cognitively busy e.g., dual task People stereotype more when they are low on resources Night vs. Day people in early and late experiments
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Naïve Physics
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Solutions…
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Limited Resources Please answer the following: 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = ? What if instead you saw: 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8 = ? Limited working memory capacity forces us to “guestimate” rather than compute Most people guess bigger answers when they see the first over the second version anchoring
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Brain Damage and Reasoning Participants were No brain damage (normal) People with frontal lobe damage People with temporal lobe damage All solved transitive inference problems: a > b, b > c, Is a > c? All also worked on a Matrices Test
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Sample Matrices Test
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