Psychology Chapter 8
Thinking
o Cognition
All mental activities associated with thinking, knowing,
remembering and communicating
o Metacognition
Cognition about our own cognition
Keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes
o Prototype:
A mental image or best example of a category
Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and
easy method or sorting items into categories
Experiences may not always match up with one’s
prototype
o Concept
Mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or
people
Simplify thinking
Formed by developing a prototype
o Strategies in solving problems
Trial and error
Algorithm
A methodical, logical rule or procedure that
guarantees a solution for a problem
, Heuristic
A simple thinking strategy that allows one to make
judgements and solve problems efficiently
Heuristics are speedier but more error prone than
algorithms
Insight
A sudden realization of the solution to a problem
Contracts with strategy based solutions
A burse of right temporal lobe EEG activity accompanied
insight solutions to word problems
o Obstacles to problem solving
Confirmation bias
Tendency to search for information that supports
your preconceptions and to ignore or distort
evidence that contradicts them
Functional fixation
Inability to see a problem from a new perspective
An obstacle to problem solving
o Making decisions and judgements
Each day we make hundreds of judgements and decisions
We seldom take the time and effort to reason
systematically and often follow our intuition
Intuition
o Effortless, immediate, and automatic feeling or
thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious
reasoning
o Usually adaptive
2
, o Recognition developed form deep and special
knowledge, born of experience, implicit
o Some intuitive mental shortcuts can lead to
poor decisions
Representativeness heuristic
Judging the likelihood of an event
in terms of how well it seems to
represent, or match, a particular
prototype
May lead to ignorance of other
relevant information
Availability heuristic
Judging the likelihood of an event
based on its availability in memory
Events that readily come with mind
are assumed to be common
Such thinking can distort one’s
judgements of other people
COVID-19 and the availability
heuristic
o Nonstop news coverage of
the dangerous pandemic
distorted young people’s
judgments of how it may
affect them
o Fearing the wrong things
We fear heat our ancestral history has prepared us to fear
We fear what we cannot control
We fear what is immediate
3
Thinking
o Cognition
All mental activities associated with thinking, knowing,
remembering and communicating
o Metacognition
Cognition about our own cognition
Keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes
o Prototype:
A mental image or best example of a category
Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and
easy method or sorting items into categories
Experiences may not always match up with one’s
prototype
o Concept
Mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or
people
Simplify thinking
Formed by developing a prototype
o Strategies in solving problems
Trial and error
Algorithm
A methodical, logical rule or procedure that
guarantees a solution for a problem
, Heuristic
A simple thinking strategy that allows one to make
judgements and solve problems efficiently
Heuristics are speedier but more error prone than
algorithms
Insight
A sudden realization of the solution to a problem
Contracts with strategy based solutions
A burse of right temporal lobe EEG activity accompanied
insight solutions to word problems
o Obstacles to problem solving
Confirmation bias
Tendency to search for information that supports
your preconceptions and to ignore or distort
evidence that contradicts them
Functional fixation
Inability to see a problem from a new perspective
An obstacle to problem solving
o Making decisions and judgements
Each day we make hundreds of judgements and decisions
We seldom take the time and effort to reason
systematically and often follow our intuition
Intuition
o Effortless, immediate, and automatic feeling or
thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious
reasoning
o Usually adaptive
2
, o Recognition developed form deep and special
knowledge, born of experience, implicit
o Some intuitive mental shortcuts can lead to
poor decisions
Representativeness heuristic
Judging the likelihood of an event
in terms of how well it seems to
represent, or match, a particular
prototype
May lead to ignorance of other
relevant information
Availability heuristic
Judging the likelihood of an event
based on its availability in memory
Events that readily come with mind
are assumed to be common
Such thinking can distort one’s
judgements of other people
COVID-19 and the availability
heuristic
o Nonstop news coverage of
the dangerous pandemic
distorted young people’s
judgments of how it may
affect them
o Fearing the wrong things
We fear heat our ancestral history has prepared us to fear
We fear what we cannot control
We fear what is immediate
3
