Module 2.2b Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgments, and Decision Making: Solving Problems and Making Decisions

Executive functions: cognitive skills that work together, enabling us to generate, organize, plan, and implement goal-directed behavior.

• Ex: Recalling information about a topic and then writing an essay

Algorithms: a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier but more error-prone use of heuristics.

Heuristics: a simple thinking strategy — a mental shortcut — that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm.

• Ex: Opening a locker

  • Algorithms: turning the thing certain ways at certain numbers and guaranteed to open it

  • Heuristics: eliminating possible combinations because the first one has to be an even number, and the second has to be an odd number, and the third has to be an even number

Insight: a sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.

• Before the Aha! moment, the frontal lobes (involved in focusing attention) are active. At the instant of discovery, there’s a burst of activity in the right temporal lobe, just above the ear

Wolfgang Kohler’s work demonstrated insight in other creatures

• Sultan (chimp)  jumped up and seized the short stick again. This time, he used it to pull in the longer stick — which he then used to reach the fruit. This was the AHA moment

Confirmation bias: tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and ignore or distort contradictory evidence

• This can lead to misleading outcomes in research by researchers only taking evidence that supports their claim and rejecting the evidence that contradicts their claim

Fixation: the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem-solving.

• Mental set (example of fixation): tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.

  1. Limit people’s ability to solve problems by being stuck in one perspective instead of looking through multiple lenses to see the problem and what can be done to solve them

Intuition: an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.

• It fits in the larger discussion about cognition because it uses prior experiences and makes judgments based on those experiences

• Can lead to incorrect conclusions because intuition can be wrong due to traumatic experiences

Representativeness heuristic: judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information.

• People fail to consider base rates (likelihood of something happening) when using this because the characteristics match their prototype so they come to a conclusion even if it’s not very likely)

• This relates to stereotyping because based on others’ physical appearance, actions, intelligence, etc, we assume that they fit the prototype of the person/thing in our mind

• While watching a scary movie, this heuristic helped me figure out who the killer was because of their physical appearance looked drained, and their actions that aren’t considered to be normal

• Gambler’s fallacy: When people observe random events repeatedly and unconsciously use the representativeness heuristic when judging the likelihood of future events (casinos for example)

Availability heuristic: judging the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

• We exaggerate our fears of unlikely events because the availability heuristic makes us fear what is most readily available in memory, we fear what we can’t control, we fear what is immediate, and we fear what our ancestral history has prepared us to fear.

Overconfidence: the tendency to be more confident than correct — to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.

• Influences decisions or judgments in both helpful and detrimental ways by leading us to make bad/wrong decisions but overconfident people tend to live more happily because they make tough decisions easily and are competent

• Planning fallacy: overestimating our future leisure time and income

• Sunk-cost fallacy: we stick to our original plan because we’ve invested our time, even when switching to a new approach could save us time.

Belief perseverance: the persistence of one’s initial conceptions even after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited (sometimes aided by confirmation bias)

• Different from confirmation bias because belief perseverance is when you’re firm in your belief(s) while confirmation bias is when you’re only acknowledging evidence that supports your point and not the evidence that contradicts it

• Considering and pondering on the opposite view can be done to ensure that belief perseverance does not impact the ability to think objectively

Framing: the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments

• Powerful in influencing cognition by affecting the way a question or statement is being understood in one way or another → potentially different answers compared to it being framed a different way

Nudge: framing choices in a way that encourages people to make beneficial decisions.

• 3 ways framing can be used as a nudge to promote beneficial decisions

  1. Tasty-sounding food labels

  2. Making the person think about what the moral choice is when they’re given money

  3. Default options for beneficial decisions and then allowing them to opt-out

Benefits of intuition