8.1-8.9: How People Think Flashcards
All of the mental activities associated with thinking, including knowing, remembering, solving problems, making judgements and decisions, and communicating
Cognition
The scientific study of mental activities and how they operate
Cognitive psychology
An internal mental symbol that stands for some object, event, or state of affairs in the world
Mental representation
A mental category that groups similar objects, events, ideas, or people
Concept
A best example or average member of a concept that incorporates most of the features most commonly associated with it
Prototype
A step-by-step procedure for solving problems that guarantees a solution
Algorithm
A sudden conscious change in a person’s understanding of some situation or problem
Insight
A mental framework for how to solve a problem based on prior experience with similar problems
Mental set
An obstacle to problem solving that involves focusing on an object’s typical functions, thus failing to recognize atypical functions that could help solve a problem
Functional fixedness
The process of reorganizing one’s understanding of a problem to facilitate a solution
Restructuring
The idea that rational decision making is constrained by limitations in people’s cognitive abilities, available information, and time
Bounded rationality
The proposal that people have two types of thinking that they can use to make judgements and decisions: one that is slower, more effortful, and leads to more thoughtful and rational outcomes, and one that is fast, fairly effortless, and leads to decent outcomes most of the time
Dual processing theory
A mental shortcut that allows people to efficiently solve problems and make judgements and decisions
Heuristic
A mental shortcut for judging the likelihood of something based on how well it represents some category
Representativeness heuristic
A mental shortcut for deciding how frequent or probable something is based on how easily examples come to mind
Availability heuristic
A mental shortcut for making judgements and decisions that involves relying on affect - the good-for-me or bad-for-me feelings we associate with various objects and events in the world
Affect heuristic
The tendency to look for and weigh evidence that confirms preexisting beliefs more strongly than evidence that is inconsistent with those beliefs
Confirmation bias
The tendency for people to resist changing their beliefs, even when faced with disconfirming evidence
Belief perseverance
The particular way that an issue, decision, or set of options is described. Framing can change decisions by shifting the decision maker’s reference point
Framing
The tendency to make choices, including riskier ones, that minimize losses
Loss aversion
The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one’s knowledge and judgements
Overconfidence bias
The tendency, once some outcome is known, to overestimate the likelihood that one would have predicted that outcome in advance
Hindsight bias
