The Broader Picture

Question 1

1. Judgement and Decision Making

Answer 1

Simple and probabilistic judgements lead to beliefs about the world, which, combined with preferences, lead to decisions
Kahneman and Tversky heuristics for probabilistic judgement
Prospect Theory as a descriptive/psychological account of decision making

Question 2

2. Reasoning

Answer 2

Wason (four card) selection task (and two other Wason tasks: 2-4-6 and THOG)
Often presented as work on “hypothesis testing”
Deductive problems
Three-term series (John is taller than Bill; Bill is taller than Steve; so…)
Conditional reasoning (If there is coal in the shed, we won’t get cold; we have got cold; so…)
Syllogisms (Some elephants are friendly; No friendly animals bite; so….)

Question 3

Other “Reasoning” Findings

Answer 3

Most simple looking problems are, in Peter Wason’s words, “deceptively simple”
People show “belief bias” in reasoning
They generate or accept conclusions that link terms in the problem to form sentences that conform to pre-existing beliefs (e.g. All wolves are dangerous), even if those conclusions don’t really follow
System 1 + failure of System 2 to monitor

Question 4

3. Problem Solving (and Game Playing)

Answer 4

For all problems except the very simplest, there are staggeringly huge numbers of possibilities to consider (e.g. Possible games of chess, if the problem is “how to win”)
So, just as it is usually too much work to calculate probabilities properly, people have to look for other ways to solve problems
E.g. “hill climbing” – at each step try to do something that gets you nearer to the solution

Question 5

Expertise

Answer 5

Strong methods are usually relatively simple, procedurally
They involve retrieving and using relevant bits of knowledge
So, associating bits of knowledge with relevant cues is important

Question 6

4. Creativity

Answer 6

Creativity involves both novelty and usefulness
The novelty may arise in the development of new concepts (or new takes on old concepts – e.g. space and time in relativity theory)
Creative thinking cannot be defined purely cognitively, but depends, in complex ways, on the context in which it occurs (Csikszentmihalyi, and others)