Chapter 8: Thinking, Reasoning & Language Flashcards
Thinking
any mental activity or processing of information
thinking includes
learning, remembering, previewing, communicating, believing and deciding
thinking =
cognitiion
We are all ________ ______
cognitive misers
what does a cognitive miser mean
invests as little energy as possible unless it’s necessary to do more
when can cognitive economy get us in trouble?
when it leads us to oversimplify
what do our minds use to increase our thinking efficency?
heuristics (mental short cuts)
what does cognitive economy allow us to do
simplify what we attend to and keep the information we need for decisions making manageable minimum
Cognitive economy was refered to by Gigerenzer and Goldstein as
fast and frugal thinking
are heuristics effective?
yes
- a study by Samuel gosling revealed untrained observers make surprising accurate judgements
can you detect people personality from facebook profiles?
yes, some studys have found this
can you tell a persons personality from there online gamers’ avartars and player names
people are less likely to be able to
- suggests that gamer profiles are who they want to be perceived as vs. who they actually are
Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal
showed participants 30-second silent clips and asked to evaluate them on instructors nonverbal behaviours
participants ratings where correlated significantly with the teachers end of course evaluations by students
representativeness heuristics
involves judging the probability of an event based on how prevalent the event has been in the past
representativeness heuristics example
meeting someone shy, awkward, and a tournament chess player, and assuming they are more likely to be a mathematics major than a psychology major
base rate =
how common a behaviour or characteristics is in general
availability heuristics
estimate the occurrence based on how easy it come to our minds or how “available” it is in our memories
availability heuristics example
which has more calories beer or peanuts?
most people answer beer because the idea that beer is high in calories is prevalent in our society when in reality peanuts actually have more calories
Hindsight Bias is also known as
the “ I knew it all along effect”
Hindsight Bias
our tendency to overestimate how accurately we could have predicted something happening once we know the outcome
Hindsight bias example
“Monday Morning Quarterbacking”
- when commentators and spectators of a football game played sunday evening point out the fact that a different strategy would have worked better
conformation bias
tendency to seek out evidence that supports our hypotheses or beliefs and deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that does
top down processing
brain only processes information that it recieves, and constructs meaning from it slowly and surely by building up understanding from expereice
applications of top down processing
sensation
chunking