Chapter 9 PSYC notes
Chapter 9 - Thinking and Intelligence
A concept is a mental category that groups: objects, relations, activities abstractions, or qualities that share certain properties
Concepts simplify and summarize information about the world so that it is manageable and so that we can make decisions quickly and efficiently.
Basic Concepts have a moderate number of instances. They are easier to acquire than concepts with few or many instances. Ex you see an apple and know its an apple, maybe not the type of apple but its a basic concept
When we need to decide whether something belongs to a concept, we are likely to compare it to a prototype, a representative instance of a concept. Ex what do you think of when you think of birds (not an ostrich)
The words used to express concepts may influence or shape how we think about them. Ex: snow has 1 word in English but maybe 10 in another (depending on the type of snow) - Whorf’s theory (the proposal that the particular language one speaks influences the way one thinks about reality)
Cognitive Schemas are an integrated mental network of knowledge, beliefs, and expectations concerning a particular aspect of the world. - ex tipping culture
People also have schemas about cultures, occupations, events, geographical locations, and many other features of the social and natural environment. Ex eating at a restaurant
Mental images are a representation in the mind that mirrors or resembles the thing it represents.
They are also important in constructing cognitive schemas.
Visual images (pictures in the mind’s eye) behave much like images on a computer screen because we can manipulate them, they occur in a mental space of a fixed size, and small ones contain less detail than larger ones.
Subconscious Thinking (not all mental processing is conscious)
Subconscious processes lie outside of awareness but can be brought into consciousness when necessary. ex: becomes automatic, its subconscious but can easily be brought back into consciousness (knitting/driving)
They allow us to perform two or more actions at once when one action is highly automatic.
Multitasking—toggling between tasks that are not automatic: is usually inefficient, introduces errors, and can even be dangerous.
We do not have unlimited cognitive capacity to take on more and more tasks simultaneously.
Psychologists suggest multitasking should be called task switching; our attention alternates between tasks rather than completing them simultaneously.
Nonconscious processes remain outside of conscious awareness but nonetheless affect behavior. - know the difference between nonconscious and subconscious
They are involved in implicit learning, which occurs when we: learn something but don’t know how we learned it, aren’t able to state exactly what we’ve learned
Implicit learning is not always helpful because it can also generate biases and prejudices.
When problems are well-defined, they can often be solved by applying an algorithm.
Algorithm: A problem-solving strategy guaranteed to produce the correct (or best) solution even if the user does not know how it works. ex making a recipe you normally make but for double the ppl so you follow the algorithm and double it
When problems are fuzzier, people often must apply rules of thumb called heuristics, which: help limit options to a manageable number of promising ones, and reduce the cognitive effort it takes to make a decision.
Some problems lend themselves to nonconscious processes such as intuition and insight.
“Fast” thinking applies to rapid, intuitive, emotional, almost automatic decisions.
“Slow” thinking requires intellectual effort, which is why most people rely on the former—and make mistakes.
Reasoning is purposeful mental activity that involves operating on information to reach a conclusion. Unlike impulsive (“fast”) or nonconscious responding, reasoning requires us to draw specific inferences from: observations, facts, and assumptions
Formal reasoning problems provide the information necessary to: reach a conclusion or solution and permit a single correct or best answer.
Informal reasoning problems often have no clearly correct solution.
Thus, they require dialectical reasoning which is a process in which opposing facts or ideas are weighed and compared, with a view to determining the best solution or resolving differences.
Critical thinkers often make use of dialectical reasoning because they understand that although some things can never be known with certainty, some judgments are more valid than others because of their coherence, fit with the available evidence, usefulness, and so on.
You're not using dialectical reasons if you are a certain way bc your family is, like politically and shit.
People tend to exaggerate the likelihood of improbable events in part because of the affect and availability heuristics.
Affect heuristic: The tendency to consult their emotions (affect) to judge the “goodness” or “badness” of a situation rather than judging probabilities objectively. - based off emotion or gut feeling not so much logic
Availability heuristic: The tendency to judge the probability of a type of event by how easy it is to think of examples or instances. Ex: worried about getting in a plane crash, not worried about getting in a car crash.
Problem solving strategies that rely on our prior experiences and provide an educated guess as to what is the most likely solution.
Conjunction Fallacy The mistaken belief that finding a specific member in two overlapping categories (i.e., a member of the conjunction of two categories) is more likely than finding any member of one of the larger, general categories.
Conjunction Fallacy occurs when we use the Representative Heuristic, which is making judgments of likelihood based on how well an example represents a specific category.
Avoiding loss
People try to avoid or minimize the risk of incurring losses when they make decisions.
We are swayed in our choices by: the desire to avoid loss, the framing effect, the tendency for people’s choices to be affected by how a choice is presented, or framed, such as whether it is worder in terms of potential losses or gains.
Bias and mental sets
People often forgo economic gain because of fairness bias; we are motivated to see fairness prevail. Fairness bias appears to have evolutionary roots.
It is being studied in primates, in human toddlers, and by using brain scans.
People often overestimate their ability to have made accurate predictions (the Hindsight Bias).
When people are thinking about an issue they already feel strongly about, they often succumb to the confirmation bias:
In thinking critically, most of us apply a double standard; we think most critically about results we dislike.
The scientific method can be difficult because it forces us to consider evidence that disconfirms our beliefs.
Another barrier to rational thinking is the development of a mental set.
This is a tendency to try to solve new problems by using the same: heuristics, strategies, and rules that worked in the past on similar problems.
Mental sets are not helpful when a problem calls for fresh insights and methods.
Biases can sometimes be beneficial by: speeding our mental processing of a complex world, or smoothing our social interactions.
The “bias blind spot”: we acknowledge that other people have biases that distort reality. But we tend to think that we are free of bias and see the world as it really is.
Intelligence is an inferred characteristic, usually defined as the ability to profit from experience, acquire knowledge, think abstractly, act purposefully, or adapt to changes in the environment.
We infer a certain degree of intelligence based on characteristics we can see and measure directly: Outcomes of rational decisions, Answers to standardized tests, Purposefulness of behavior
Most psychologists believe that a general ability, a g factor (Spearman’s g), underlies this performance.
They hold that this general ability can be further described as either crystallized (reflecting accumulated knowledge) knowledge and skills do arithmetic, define words, make political decisions fluid (reflecting the ability to reason and to use information to solve new problems) - it decreases as you get older
Alfred Binet designed the first widely used intelligence test to identify children who could benefit from remedial work.
The intelligence quotient, or I Q, represents how well a person has done on an intelligence test compared to other people. Mental age/Real age * 100 (Standford-Binet IQ test)
Mental age (MA): A measure of development expressed in terms of the average mental ability at a given age. - after 25 and 30, your real age goes up every year, but your mental age won't change. the mental age test will say you get dumber
Stereotypes exist about a person’s: ethnicity gender age
These may cause the person to feel stereotype threat, which can lead to: anxiety that interferes with test performance in the case of negative stereotypes enhanced performance in the case of positive stereotypes
Cognitive approaches to intelligence emphasize several kinds of intelligence, strong working memory, and the strategies people use to solve problems
An important cognitive ingredient of intelligence is metacognition, which involves the knowledge or awareness of your own cognitive processes and the ability to monitor and control those processes
metacognition ex: studying for an exam and being able to know what you need to work on, someone who has a low metacognition score will think they understand everything about the same. low meta will also think they did better on tests than they did. Its important to ask yourself if you actually understand what your learning.
Robert Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence proposes three aspects of intelligence.
Analytical: The information-processing strategies you draw on when you are thinking intelligently about a problem. 51.50… listen
Creative: Creativity in transferring skills to new situations. - you'll have a tougher time solving new problems
Practical: Practical application of intelligence; tacit knowledge, action-oriented strategies for achieving goals that not formally taught but must instead be inferred by observing others. - this is kinda like “street smart”
Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory holds that an intelligence is best characterized as a capacity to process certain kinds of information.
Rather than spotlighting a single g factor, Gardner claims that the information-processing skills we possess can take many forms.
Emotional intelligence is important, involves ability to identify your own and other people’s emotions accurately, express emotions clearly and regulate emotions in yourself and others
People with high emotional intelligence (“E Q”): use their emotions to motivate themselves, spur creative thinking, and deal empathically with others
People who are lacking in E Q are often unable to identify own emotions, may express emotions inappropriately.
Some researchers, especially those in cognitive ethology, argue that nonhuman animals have greater cognitive abilities than previously thought.
Some animals can use objects as simple tools.
Chimpanzees and birds have shown evidence of a simple understanding of numbers.
Certain animals may have aspects of a theory of mind, an understanding of how their own minds and the minds of others work. (great apes, dolphins, elephants etc)
Chimps and even monkeys may also be capable of some metacognition, the ability to understand and monitor their own cognitive processes.