PHL 261 Exam 1

Question 1

What did Nisbett & Wilson believe?

Answer 1

Introspective Opacity: “When people attempt to report on their cognitive processes…they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection…their reports are based on…implicit causal theories”

Question 2

What did Nichols & Stich believe?

Answer 2

Introspective Process Opacity: monitoring mechanism and “belief box”

Question 3

What Carruthers believe?

Answer 3

Introspective Opacity: “All access to our own judgements and decisions is a matter of interpretation, just as it is when we access the judgements and decisions of other people”

Question 4

What is introspection?

Answer 4

The action of accessing one’s own mental states and/or processes
e.g., beliefs, desires, decisions, emotional states, causes of behavior

Question 5

What is a mental state?

Answer 5

A standard mental entity such as perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and feelings

Question 6

What is a mental process?

Answer 6

The causation between mental states (e.g. dead pet makes you sad)

Question 7

Why is the issue of mental states and processes important?

Answer 7

For interpersonal relationships and in order to use introspective reports as psychological data

Question 8

What is introspective transparency?

Answer 8

Widespread, reliable access to one’s own mental states and processes

Question 9

What is introspective opacity?

Answer 9

Very limited (or no) access to one’s own mental states or processes

Question 10

What are the two lines of evidence against introspective transparency?

Answer 10

1. People not knowing how they solved problems
2. People not knowing why they behaved the way they did

Question 11

What is some anecdotal evidence against introspective transparency?

Answer 11

Creative geniuses often describe being not aware that they are thinking until a result appears
“The individual has no idea what factors prompted the solution”

Question 12

What was the Maier study?

Answer 12

Subjects were placed in a room with various objects around it and they had to discover how to tie together two hanging ropes that were distant from one another

Question 13

How did Maier help them solve the problem?

Answer 13

Maier would casually start swinging one of the ropes if the subject was stumped and subjects would find the solution shortly after

Question 14

How did the Maier subjects say they solved the problem?

Answer 14

Some said “it just dawned on me” and others said an ineffective clue helped them solve the problem (no introspection)

Question 15

How does the unawareness of behavior study support opacity?

Answer 15

The results indicated that people do not have access to why they choose to do things

Question 16

What are some examples from studies of people being wrong when introspecting?

Answer 16

Dutton & Aron study: Thinking they find someone more attractive because they met the person while in peril
Nisbett & Wilson study: Inventing characteristics when justifying why one of two identical products is preferable to them
Wells & Petty study: Head-nodding while listening to a message causing a person to report stronger belief in it

Question 17

What were Nisbett & Wilson’s three conclusions for introspective opacity?

Answer 17

1. people are bad at reporting on what happens in their mind
2. when saying what happened in their mind, they aren’t introspecting, but rather theorizing (perhaps using “theory of mind”) to guess what happened
3. when they do get it right, it just because the clues they used
   happened to be not misleading

Question 18

What is the theory of mind?

Answer 18

A mental mechanism possessed by humans that produces causal explanations meant to explain and predict others’ behavior

Question 19

What is state opacity?

Answer 19

Subjects can introspect neither mental states, nor the causal processes of which they are a part

Question 20

What is process opacity?

Answer 20

Subjects can introspect mental states, but not the actual causal processes in which the mental states are involved

Question 21

What is known about children and theory of mind?

Answer 21

They don’t acquire theory of mind until they are 4 years old and prior to that they believe that everyone possesses the same knowledge that they do

Question 22

What is Carrruthers’s view on state opacity?

Answer 22

He believes that we can introspect perceptual states, but we cannot introspect judgements and decisions

Question 23

What experiments support Carruthers view of state opacity?

Answer 23

Split-brain study
Neural stimulation study
Social psychology experiments
Sense of agency experiments

Question 24

What is the general processing that occurs in the cortex and subcortex of the brain?

Answer 24

Cortex: higher functions (memory, perception, thought)
Subcortex: lower functions (autonomic and regular)

Question 25

What are sulci and gyri?

Answer 25

Sulci: a fold in a cortex
Gyri: area between folds

Question 26

What is the neocortex?

Answer 26

The outer layer of the brain where higher functions such as thought, perception and memory take place

Question 27

What is the terminology for the brain?

Answer 27

anterior: towards the front
posterior: towards the back
superior: towards the top
inferior: towards the bottom

Question 28

What are the four cortical lobes and their functions?

Answer 28

Occipital lobe: visual processing
Parietal lobe: body map, preparing visual information for action
Temporal lobe: memory, multimodal processing
Frontal lobe: executive function, action