Thinking and Reasoning Lecture Notes Vocabulary

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from the lecture notes on thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving.

Subjective Expected Utility (SEU) Theory

A theory where individuals calculate the expected utility of each option by considering the value and probability of different outcomes, then choose the option with the highest expected utility.

Reason-Based Approach to Decision-Making

An approach to decision-making focusing on reasons and arguments to support decisions, highlighting effects like the disjunction effect and asymmetric dominance.

Certainty Effect

A cognitive bias where people tend to overweigh outcomes they consider certain relative to outcomes which are merely probable.

Loss Aversion

A concept where losses are felt more strongly than gains when making decisions, often by a factor of approximately two.

Prospect Theory

A theory describing how people value gains and losses, highlighting diminishing marginal value and loss aversion, with a function concave for gains and convex for losses.

Diminishing Marginal Value

The concept that the subjective value of money decreases as the quantity increases.

Framing Effects

The influence of how information is presented on decision-making, leading to different choices based on whether outcomes are framed as gains or losses.

Risk Aversion and Risk-Seeking

The tendency to be risk-averse (avoid risk) when outcomes are framed as gains and risk-seeking (embrace risk) when outcomes are framed as losses.

Principle of Invariance

A cognitive bias where people's choices should depend on the situation, not on the way it is described. This principle is often violated due to framing effects.

Reference Points

The idea that gains and losses are evaluated relative to a neutral point, and that losses have a greater emotional impact than gains of the same magnitude.

Endowment Effect

A cognitive bias where people place a higher value on things they own compared to things they do not.

Disjunction Effect

A psychological phenomenon where people may make different, even contradictory, decisions when faced with options under certain versus uncertain conditions.

Heuristics

A short cut ‘rule of thumb’ for making judgments that often produces the ‘right’ answer but sometimes leads to biases.

Biases

A systematic ‘error’ in judgment relative to some normative standard, e.g., probability theory.

Representativeness Heuristic

A cognitive bias where people judge whether someone or something belongs to a category by thinking about how similar they are to a stereotypical member of that category, often ignoring base rate information.

Base Rate Neglect

The tendency to ignore base rate information (i.e., in this case the proportion of green and blue cabs)

Availability Heuristic

A cognitive bias where the likelihood of events is judged based on the ease with which instances come to mind.

Anchoring and Adjustment

A cognitive bias where people rely too heavily on an initial reference point ('anchor') and make insufficient adjustments from that point when making estimates.

Recognition Heuristic

A heuristic where, in decision-making under uncertainty, if one option is recognized and the other is not, then choose the recognized option.

Gambler’s Fallacy

The belief that after a streak of events (e.g. Heads), the opposite becomes more likely (e.g. Tails).

Reasoning

The process of going beyond the given information to draw new conclusions, fundamental to human intelligence and underpinning the development of laws, science, technology, and culture.

Inductive Reasoning

Reasoning from specific instances to a general rule, involving finding a pattern and using it to make predictions.

Abductive Reasoning

Generating an explanation for an observation.

Deductive Reasoning

Taking some facts as true and determining what new information can be derived from them, where a deduction is valid if the conclusion must be true given the premises.

Belief Bias

If an initial conclusion aligns with our beliefs, we are less inclined to seek alternative possibilities.

Conditional Reasoning

Reasoning with "if-then" statements (often causal).

Mental Models

People construct models to represent the premises.

Pragmatic Reasoning Schemas

People have specific rules for reasoning with permission and obligation and perform better on these than abstract tasks.

Cheater Detection

Evolutionary mechanism to detect cheaters.

Counterfactual Thinking

Imagining alternatives to reality, simulating a sequence of causal events, and expressed in the form of a conditional: “If Boris Johnson hadn't been elected, then Brexit wouldn't have happened”.

Problem

A start state, a goal state, and the path from the start state to the goal state is unclear (subjective).

Well-defined Problems

All aspects (initial state, goal state, possible moves) are clearly defined.

Ill-defined Problems

Start state, end state, or possible strategies are unknown; common in everyday situations.

Knowledge-lean Problems

Do not require specific knowledge; often puzzles.

Knowledge-rich Problems

Require specific knowledge.

Gestalt Approach

Problem-solving involves insight, sudden realization or understanding. Problem is solved after an incubation period.

Functional Fixedness

Task: Fix and light a candle on the wall so wax doesn't drip on the table

Representational Change Theory

Explains some mechanisms underlying insight. Aims to explain the processes underlying insight, but doesn’t explain what leads to representational change or why incubation helps.

Information Processing Approach

Objective measure of optimal performance; can test whether people make moves consistent with the heuristics.