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magical thinking
n. The belief that ones thoughts can influence
the world and others around oneself.
This is usual in children before the age of 5 or
6 but is replaced by logical thought after that
except in some cases of wishful thinking.
reasoning
n. 1. Thinking in a linear and logical manner
to draw conclusions from facts or the classification of things or events using
general
principles to infer order in the information.
2. The particular sequence of ideas used to
arrive at a conclusion.
thinking
n. 1. The stream of consciousness and all its
contents including silent vocalizations, emotions,
images, and the perception of the
external and internal worlds. 2. The processes
which underlie behaviour and all the
phenomena of experience. 3. Any product
of the mind, such as judgments, attitudes,
knowledge, opinions, and beliefs.
thinking, convergent
n. Any process of problem solving that applies
learned methods or solutions to a problem.
thinking, critical
n. A form of problem-cantered thinking in
which the person consciously reflects on a
Divergent Thinking
The term divergent thinking describes a way of thinking that doesn't lead to one goal,
but is open - ended. Problems that are solved this way can have a large number of potential
'solutions' of which none is exactly 'right' or 'wrong', though some might be more suitable
than others. It can be contrasted by convergent thinking - thinking that seeks to find the
correct answer to a specific problem.
Divergent thinking is often associated with creativity, and it undoubtedly leads to many
creative ideas. Nevertheless, researches showed that in the processes that result in original
and practical inventions, things like searching for solutions, being aware of structures, and
looking for analogies are also heavily involved.
Insight
There are two very different ways of approaching a goal-oriented situation. In one an
organism readily reproduces the response to the given problem from past experience. This is
called reproductive thinking.
The second way requires something new and different to achieve the goal, prior
learning is of little help here. Such productive thinking is (sometimes) argued to involve
insight. Gestalt psychologists even state that insight problems are a separate category of
problems in their own right.
Tasks that might involve insight usually have certain features - they require something
new and no obvious to be done and in most cases they are difficult enough to prevent that the
initial solution attempt is successful. When solving this kind of problems one experiences a
so called "AHA-experience" - the solution pops up all of the sudden. At one time they do not
have the answer to a problem and in the next second it's solved.
Fixation
Sometimes, previous experience or familiarity can even make problem
solving more difficult. In effect habitual directions can get in the way of
finding new directions. This is called fixation.
Mental Fixedness
One approach to studying fixation was study wrong-answer verbal insight problems. To
this, people tend to give rather an incorrect answer when failing to solve, than to give no answer
at all. A typical example is, when people are told that, on a lake, the area covered by water lilies
doubles every 24 hours and that it takes 60 days to cover the whole lake, and are asked: 'How
many days does it take to cover half the lake?' the typical respond is '30 days' (whereas 59 days is
correct).
Functional Fixedness
Functional fixedness concerns the solution of object-use problems. The basic
idea is that, when the usual way of using an object is emphasized, it will be
far more difficult for a person to use that object in a novel manner.
Deductive Reasoning
Thinking Categorically
The basic principle of deductive reasoning is that a conclusion follows from two
premises. An example of such a syllogism is:
The statements of the premises begin typically with all, none or some (as in the
example) and the conclusion starts with therefore. These kinds of syllogisms fulfil the task of
describing a relationship between two categories. Two different approaches serve the study of
syllogisms which are the normative approach and the descriptive approach.
The normative approach is based on logic and deals with the problem of categorizing
conclusions as either valid or invalid. Two basic principles and a method called Euler circles
have been developed to help judging about the validity. The first principle was created by
Aristotle and says If the two premises are true, the conclusion of a valid syllogism must be true
(Goldstein, 2005,page 431). The second principle explains why the following syllogism is
(surprisingly) valid:
Even though it is quite obvious that the first premise is not true and further that the
conclusion is not true, the whole syllogism is still valid. The second principle inhales that The
validity of a syllogism is determined only by its form, not its content.
With the method of evaluation researchers found typical reasons misjudgements about
syllogisms. Premises starting with All, Some or No imply a special atmosphere and
influence a person in his decision. One mistake often occurring is judging a syllogism incorrectly
as valid, in which the two premises as well as the conclusion starts with All. The influence of
the provided atmosphere leads to the right decision at most times, but is definitely not reliable and
guides the person to a rash decision. This phenomenon is summarized by the atmosphere effect.
In addition to the form of a syllogism, the content is likely to influence a persons decision as well
and cause the person to neglect his logical thinking. Given a conclusion as Some bananas are
pink, hardly any participants would judge the syllogism as valid, even though it might be valid
according to its premises (e.g. Some bananas are fruits. All fruits are purple.) The belief bias
states that people tend to judge syllogisms with believable conclusions as valid, while they tend
to judge syllogisms with not believable conclusions as invalid.
From the data already given it is still not possible to consider what mental processes
might be occurring as people are trying to determine if a syllogism is valid. After finding out that
Euler circles can be used to determine the validity of a syllogism Phillip Johnson Laird (1999)
wondered whether people would use such circles naturally when not haven been taught to them.
At the same time he found out that they do not work for some more complex syllogisms and that
a problem can be solved by applying logical rules, but most people most people solve them by
imagining the situation. This is the base idea of people using mental models a specific situation
that is represented in a persons mind that can be used to help determine the validity of syllogisms
to solve deductive reasoning problems. The basic principle behind such a mental model theory
is: A conclusion is valid only if it cannot be refuted by any mode of the premises. This theory is
attractive because it makes predictions that can be tested and because it can be applied without
training in the rules of logic. But there are still problems that face researchers when trying to
determine how people reason about syllogisms. These problems include the fact that a variety of
different strategies are used by people in reasoning and that some people are better in solving
syllogisms than others.
Now it is known that people can be influenced by the content of syllogisms rather then
by focusing on logic when judging their validity. Psychologists have wondered whether people
are influenced by their cultures when judging. Therefore they have done cross cultural
experiments in which reasoning problems were presented to people in different cultures. They
found out that people from different cultures judge differently to these questions. For example, a
man from a traditional tribe in Liberia would give a wrong answer to such a reasoning problem
when the question is considered purely in terms of formal logic, but for justifying his answer he
would use logic. This shows that the man uses evidence from his own experience (empirical
evidence) but is ignoring evidence presented in the syllogism (theoretical evidence). When asking
people to explain their answers it becomes clear that they often base their response on empirical
evidence. Another fact that becomes by these experiments is the difference between educated and
uneducated participants. Uneducated people are often affected by the believability of the
conclusion, while educated people base their judgments on logic. These results might occur
because of the difference in raising up their children. It also shows that European Americans for
example are less susceptible to the belief bias then Eastern Asians. Such experiments
148 | Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience Decision Making and Reasoning
strengthen the idea that people in different cultures may use different strategies for
reasoning.
Thinking Conditionally
Another type of syllogisms is called conditional syllogism. Just like the categorical
one, it also has two premises and a conclusion. In difference the first premise has the form If
then. Syllogisms like this one are common in everyday life. Consider the following example:
Now it can be differenciated between four forms of conditional syllogisms, which all do
have abstract terms p and q indicated in parenthesis. These notations p and q are typically used
for conditional syllogisms where p is the antecedent (the If term in If p then q) and q is the
consequent (the then term in If p then q). The first form of conditional syllogisms which will
be explained is called modus ponens (which means method of affirmation in Latin, because the
antecedent p is affirmed in the second premise/ assumption). This rule of inference says: If p
then q, and also given p (affirming the antecedent). To make it more clearly the example given
before is used, but this time the antecedent is affirmed in the second premise:
Another rule of inference which is the second form of conditional syllogisms is called
modus tollens (which means method of denying in Latin, because the consequent is negated in
the second premise).It says: If p then q, and q is false. Again the same example is used but it is
differs a bit because of negating the consequent in the second premise:
Now the following two forms are invalid. It will be soon considered why. Denying the
antecedent is the third form which procedes the negation of p in the second premise:
This time, the cards show names of animals and black or white triangles placed above or
below the word. Again, the cards can be sorted with attention to different attributes of the animals
(living on land or in water, domestic or dangerous, large or small) or the triangles (black or white,
above or below word). Unlike in the WCST, people with frontal lobe damage fail to solve the task
because they cannot even conceptualize the properties of the animals or the triangles, thus are not
able to deduce a sorting-rule for the cards (in contrast, there are some individuals with only
perseverative tendencies, they find a sorting-criterion but then are unable to switch it).
Social psychology is the scientific study of how a persons behavior, thoughts, and
feelings are influenced by the real, imagined, or implied presence of others. Although
there are several sections in this chapter, there are really only three main areas under
discussion:
social influence, the ways in which a persons behavior can be affected by other
people; social cognition, the ways in which people think about other people; and social
interaction, the positive and negative aspects of people relating to others.
between the ages of twenty and forty. Highly talented people, however,
often exhibit far into old age creative ability which is superior
to that of average people in youth.
Thinking
THINKING, or cognition, refers to all the
mental activities associated with thinking,
knowing, remembering, and communicating.
Cognitive psychologists study these activities,
including the logical and sometimes
illogical ways in which we create concepts,
solve problems, make decisions, and form
judgments.
Psychology NINTH EDITION
David G. Myers Worth Publishers
41 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10010/ 2008