reasoning/decision-making Flashcards
thinking and reasoning
- Take up much of our time
- But it is surprisingly hard to pin exactly what is meant by these terms.
- We feel “conscious” of our thoughts, but are we conscious of the processes that deliver the “thought product”?
- “How can I know what I think till I see what I say” - E.M. Forster
- What follows is a “taster” - designed to give you an idea of the ways in which cognitive psychologists have approached these topics.
judgement
- The component of decision making that concerns calculating the likelihood of certain events.
- E.g., if I go to the pub I will not have time to write a good lab report
decision making
- Selecting one out of a number of potential options
- E.g., write lab report or go for a drink
problem solving
The cognitive processes that take us from recognising that there is a problem through to developing a solution.
reasoning
The component of problem solving that concerns determining what conclusions can be drawn given various statements (premises) are assumed to be true.
thinking and reasoning 2
- We use the same cognitive system for all these things
- Decision making
- Judgement
- Problem solving
- Reasoning
· They are located in the frontal cortex
- There are key differences, but also underlying similarities: A key question is “are we any good at it?” (are we rational?)
judgement
· We are particularly bad at estimating the likelihoods of things:
· “If a test to detect a disease whose prevalence is 1/1000 has a false positive rate of 5%, what is the chance that a person who tests positive actually has the disease?”
A) 0.1%
B) 95%
C) 5%
D) 2%
E) 90%
· According to Giggerenzer and Hoffrage (1999) we are simply not “wired” to understand percentages/fractions/probabilities etc.
· We are better if the question is rephrased so that it emphasizes frequencies rather than probabilities:
- “One out of 1000 people has disease X. […] Out of 1000 healthy people given the test, 50 of them will falsely test positive. […] In a random sample of 1000 of people, how many will test positive? How many of these will actually have the disease?”
· Around 75% of people get this right.
· But reframing problems in terms of frequencies may just make the underlying structure of the problem, easier to understand - we’re still pretty bad at judging frequencies.
· Kahneman & Tversky
· Due to cognitive/time limitations we employ heuristics when making judgments
1) Availability
2) Representativeness
3) Anchoring and adjustment
availability heuristic
- Is used when we estimate frequency/probability on the basis of the ease with which examples come to mind.
- E.g., are there more words that begin with the letter ‘r’ or more words with the letter ‘r’ as the third letter?
- Its also why we think we do more washing up than other people/contribute more in tutorials etc.
- Which is more likely to kill you? - bee or shark
- We don’t always use this heuristic - e.g., which name is more common - “Bush” or “Stevenson” - it’s the latter and 88% of people got this right. (Oppenheimer, 2004).
representativeness heuristic
- Is used when events that are representative or typical of a class are assigned a high probability of occurrence.
- The TOM W experiment: (extract written by a psychologist when Tom was at high school
- How likely is it that Tom graduated in:
A) Computer studies
B) Humanities - The correct answer is B) - there are three times as many graduates in humanities as there are in computer sciences.
- How likely is it that Tom graduated in:
- We often fail to consider the BASE RATE.
anchoring and adjustment
- Is used when we begin with an initial estimate of the answer and then attempt to adjust this estimate.
- Anchoring exerts its effect even when the original value is obviously arbitrary.
- Tversky and Kahneman (1974):
decision making
- We make decisions all the time - some big (which university/which degree/which partner) and some small (we decide what to look at three times a second).
- Determining which of several options is “best” is very difficult.
- Utility theory - we should choose the option which has the greatest utility (value to us).
- So - if I tossed a coin and offered +£200 if it came up heads, but you had to give me £100 if it came up tails, would you bite?
- According to utility theory you should do
A) Would you prefer to be given £800, or take an 85% chance of getting £1000? (and a 15% of getting nothing).
B) Would you prefer to give me £800, or take an 85% chance of giving me £1000 (and a 15% chance of giving me nothing?) - According to utility theory you should choose the second option in A and the first option in B.
- Kahneman and Tversky (1984) developed “prospect theory” to explain these and other findings (hence the nobel prize…)
- As its heart is the assertion that we are “loss averse” - we pay more attention to potential losses than potential gains.
- Prospect theory can explain the Framing Effect.
- A bird flue epidemic is expected to kill 600 people (Tversky and Kahneman, 1987).
- You can choose one of two treatment strategies:
A) Will save 200 people
B) Has a 33.3% chance of saving everyone, but a 66.6% chance of saving no-one. - Option B emphasises losses, so people tend to choose A (despite the fact that the two options are “equivalent”).
- Somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio)
somatic marker hypothesis
- In the real world conscious deliberation is supplemented by a more unconscious process based on “gut feelings”.
- Associations between possible routes of action and the emotional state they (or similar courses of action) resulted in on previous occasions are stored.
- These “somatic markers” are reinstated (physiologically) an used to bias attention towards the most appropriate decision.
what is problem solving
Three aspects:
* It is goal directed (how do I make the graphs for my lab report)
* An immediate solution is not available (the graph doesn’t exist)
- It involves conscious cognitive processes (it isn’t going to happen if you think about whether everyone else is having fun at the pub…)
the 3 parts problem
- The problem itself (the start state)
- The things you might do (the operators)
- The solution (the goal state)
problem solving
- You might be clear about any or all of the above.
- If you’re clear about all of them, then the problem is referred to as well-specified.
- Research focuses only on well-specified problems.
- Early approaches:
- Behaviourism - trial and error learning
- Gestalt psychology
· Insight - the “aha” experience - resulting in a transformation of the problem.
- Functional fixedness - where you only think of using an item in a manner consistent with its ‘standard’ function.
