Chapter 8: Thinking

Question 1

Study reasoning, judgements, decision making, and problem-solving

Answer 1

Cognitive psychologists

Question 2

Focus on maladaptive thought patterns and their implication for emotional well-being

Answer 2

Cognitive psychotherapy

Question 3

• Dwelling on the negative and discounting the positive
• Guy gets a bad review but gets a promotion = he dwells on the smaller problem, making it seem bigger than it is
• Having one bad grade, the rest of positive feedback doesn’t get considered

Answer 3

Magnification and minimization
(cognitive distortion)

Question 4

• Viewing negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat
• I failed on this test, so my life will be a failure
• Implies you have a crystal ball and you know your future, when you actually don’t know

Answer 4

Overgeneralization
(cognitive distortion)

Question 5

• “I feel like an idiot … therefore, I must be one
• Lap of logic

Answer 5

Reasoning from how you feel
(cognitive distortion)

Question 6

Taking blame for events that are unintended for beyond one’s control
- ex: It’s all my fault this happened

Answer 6

Personalization
(cognitive distortion)

Question 7

• Imagining (without direct evidence) what someone is thinking
• projecting your fears onto other people

Answer 7

Mind reading
(cognitive distortion)

Question 8

Drawing an inference from a general premise to a specific conclusion

Answer 8

Deductive reasoning

Question 9

We tend to judge as true those conclusions with which we agree, assuming it is true because we agree with it
→ attitudes about certain groups, types of people, attitudes about yourself

Answer 9

Confirmation bias

Question 10

Problem-solver will go from the particular to the general

Answer 10

Inductive reasoning

Question 11

The tendency to perceive an item only in terms of its most common use

Answer 11

Functional fixedness

Question 12

A tendency to approach a problem in a way that has worked in the past, even when it’s not working in the present.

Answer 12

Mental sets

Question 13

A problem-solving technique that involves breaking down a goal into smaller, more manageable steps:

Answer 13

Means-end analysis

Question 14

• Incubation / taking a break
• Sleep on it for a bit and you’ll feel better

Answer 14

Facilitation

Question 15

Yvette is trying to get accustomed to a new version of a software program that she has used for years. The program includes new ways of accomplishing certain tasks more quickly and efficiently, but Yvette sticks with her old methods when working on these tasks. Yvette’s thinking is an example of

Answer 15

A mental set

Question 16

When people assume that they should use all the numerical information provided in a problem statement they often

Answer 16

Led astray by irrelevant information

Question 17

Research on water jar problems helped scientists to recognize a common barrier to effective problem solving. This barrier was …

Answer 17

Mental set

Question 18

Herbert Simon’s research on decision making found that when making decisions, people generally are…

Answer 18

Reliant on simple strategies that often lead to irrational decisions

Question 19

Erin attends a boarding school in the countryside. Over a long weekend, 9 of her 50 classmates leave the school and document their outings on social media, while Erin and the rest of her classmates stay in the dorms. When classes resume next week, Erin thinks to herself, “My life stinks! Everyone seems to go out except for me.” This scenario is an example of…

Answer 19

The availability heuristic

Question 20

After a week’s long shark attack TV series in Australia, Elena found that Australian citizens reported greater fears of dying from a shark attack than from heart disease, despite the fact that heart disease kills 50 times more people per year than shark attacks. This scenario is best described as an example of…

Answer 20

The availability heuristic

Question 21

As a college student, Maria had several negative interactions with fans of her school’s sports rivals, the Dragons. Since then, she believed that all Dragons fans were rude and disrespectful. Recently, Maria met a new co-worker who happened to be a Dragons fan. While she initially avoided interactions with her new co-worker due to her beliefs about Dragons fans, over time she found him to be friendly, approachable, and compassionate. In this scenario, maria;s initial impression of her coworker illustrates…

Answer 21

The representativeness heuristic

Question 22

What does NOT contribute to the gambler’s fallacy?

Answer 22

The belief that each occurrence of an event is independent

Question 23

What would help a person avoid the gambler’s fallacy?

Answer 23

The belief that each incidence of an event is independent

Question 24

The gambler’s fallacy is the belief that the odds of a chance event …

Answer 24

Increase if the event has not occurred recently

Question 25

Which mental heuristic contributes to the gambler’s fallacy?

Answer 25

The representativeness heuristic

Question 26

A sign that children are applying grammatical rules and becoming more verbally sophisticated.

Answer 26

Overregularization
When little Brianna tells her father, “I maked cookies with Mommy today,”

Question 27

A language development phenomenon that occurs when a child uses a single word to refer to multiple objects or concepts

Answer 27

Overextension
When little Tommy sees a tiger in a storybook, he points at it and exclaims “Kitty!”

Question 28

Two documented advantages of being raised bilingual are increases in …

Answer 28

Social skills and executive control

Question 29

A psychological concept that refers to the value of something based on a person’s needs and desires, rather than the object’s inherent value:

Answer 29

Subjective value
Marc buys lottery tickets every week even though he knows the expected value of each $5 ticket is less than one cent.

Question 30

A cognitive bias that causes people to continue a course of action despite it being irrational or no longer beneficial. This is because people feel that their time, energy, or money would be wasted if they quit.

Answer 30

The sunk cost fallacy