Thinking and Problem Solving

Questions?• How do we form concepts?

• How do we solve problems?

• How do we make judgments?

Cognition

• Cognition – the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating–How do we logically, or illogically,

use all of our memories and experiences to solve problems, and make decisions and judgments?

Concepts

• Concepts – mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people– IE. We’ve grouped all of memories and

experiences of “chairs” into one group, and all of our memories and experiences of “dogs” into another…..therefore, when we come across a new object, we can easily define it by our pre-determined concepts and act accordingly

Concepts

• Prototypes – a mental image or best example of each concept we have developed– We match new items to our mental

prototypes in order to allow or disallow items into our concept groups• Our concept of “dog” is defined by our Golden

Retriever. A new object we meet has four legs, a tail, barks, etc……compared to our mental image of a “dog”, it must also be a “dog”

Solving Problems

• What strategies do we use to solve problems?

• What obstacles hinder our problem solving?

Problem Solving

• Trial and Error – Thomas Edison tried thousands of light bulb filaments before stumbling upon the one that worked–No organization, no preparation –

try everything and anything until something works

Problem Solving

• Algorithm – a methodical, step-by-step, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem– IE. How many words can you make out of

the letters SPLOYOCHYG? Try each letter in each position, resulting in 907,200 combinations, and then pick out the words that make sense. Step-by-step.

Problem Solving

• Heuristics – a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently by adding common sense shortcuts to step-by-step procedures; speedier, but more error-prone than algorithms– How many words can you make out of the letters

SPLOYOCHYG? You know that no words start with YY, so eliminate all of those combinations, as well as all of the YG, YH, etc. You may miss some real words, but you get an approximation.

Problem Solving

• Insight – a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem.–You’re stuck on a problem for a

long time, then suddenly the pieces just fall together and you perceive a solution – “AHA !!”

Obstacles to Problem Solving

• Confirmation Bias – a tendency to search for answers and information that confirms one’s own preconceptions– The defendant must be guilty because they

are of a certain race, gender, age, etc. Since all men are _______, then he must have done _________. You will look at all of the evidence with this in mind, and you will conclude guilt because it fits with what already “know”.

• Some problems for you to figure out…

• Candle

• a box of 17 thumbtacks

• and a book of matches

• Your objective: attach the candle to the wall so that it does not drip onto the table below.

Dot experiment

• Connect all the dots using only FOUR lines!

Obstacles to Problem Solving

• Fixation – the inability to see a problem for a new perspective–The solutions that worked in the past

(mental set) often work on new problems, and if they don’t, we get frustrated and give up. So, “think outside of the box” (use a new approach).

Obstacles to Problem Solving

• Functional Fixedness – the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions

• subjects would be given 2 cords hanging from the ceiling, and 2 heavy objects in the room. They are told they must connect the cords, but they are just far enough apart that one cannot reach the other easily. The solution was to tie one of the heavy objects to a cord and be a weight, and swing the cord as a pendulum, catch the rope as it swings while holding on to the other rope, and then tie them together.

• When tested, 5-year-old children show no signs of functional fixedness. It has been argued that this is because at age 5, any goal to be achieved with an object is equivalent to any other goal.

• However, by age 7, children have acquired the tendency to treat the originally intended purpose of an object as special

Making Decisions and Forming Judgments

• Representative Heuristics – judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes

– IE. You have a mental prototype of college professors and short, slim, and intellectual. If someone tells you a story about a friend of theirs who is short, slim, and likes poetry, then asks you if you think they are a professor or a truck driver, which do you say? Statistically, the friend would be a truck driver, but the description fits your prototype for a professor.

Making Decisions and Forming Judgments

• Availability Heuristic – making our judgments by estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory– IE. Are you afraid of airplanes? Are you afraid

of cars?

Relative-position heuristic

• Is San Diego, California, or Reno, Nevada more West?

Making Decisions and Forming Judgments

• Overconfidence – the tendency to be more confident than correct – to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs and judgments

Making Decisions and Forming Judgments

• Framing – depending on the way an issue is posed can significantly affect our decisions and judgments– IE. You would decide that 75% lean meat

was good, but decide that 25% fatty meat was bad. Birth control is great when presented as 95% effective, but not so great when presented as 5% failure rate. You have a 1 in 20 chance of dying is horrible, but a 10 in 200 chance is pretty slim.

Making Decisions and Forming Judgments

• Belief Bias – the tendency for one’s pre-existing beliefs to distort logical reasoning

• Belief Perseverance – clinging to one’s initial conceptions, even after the bias has been discredited

EMOTIONS!

• What are emotions?

• Are emotions universal?

• What are the different theories about emotion?

Emotion

• Involves:

• A subjective experience

• A physiological response

• Behavioral or expressive response

At first

• Psychologists believed emotions were disruptive forces that interfered with rational behavior

• They were believed to be primitive impulses that needed to be controlled.

Now

• Scientists realize the importance of emotions

• They help us to make powerful decisions

• Most of our choices are GUIDED by our emotions

Emotional Intelligence

• A type of intelligence that enables you to understand what emotions you are feeling and the ability to deal with them properly.

• Do you have emotional intelligence?

Adaptive

• It is believed that emotions are tied to evolution

• Fear makes us move away from dangerous situations

• Happiness and arousal make us move to reproduce

Basic Emotions

• Fear

• Surprise

• Anger

• Disgust

• Happiness

• Sadness

• (Disdain, Pride, Excitement)

Blend of emotions

• It is believed that most things we “Feel” are a blend of these 6 emotions; OR that these 6 emotions are on a continuum.

World Wide

• It has been proven time and time again that different cultures have the same basic emotions.

Neuroscience

• What part of the Nervous System are emotions involved in?

• What part of the brain?

Theories of Emotion

• There are different theories which differ in terms of which component of emotion received the most emphasis: subjective, physiological, or expressive behavior.

James-Lange Theory

• 1. I see a man by that parked car

• 2. I am trembling and running away

• 3. I am afraid!

• You feel afraid BECAUSE your heart pounds and you run away. Feedback from physiological arousal caused your subjective feelings

Cannon

• Argued against this by asking: If fear and rage are both produced by heart pounding, how do we tell the difference?

• Indeed, SOMETIMES, our heart pounds AFTER the fact:If something happens really fast, you may be afraid and THEN your heart pounds

Evidence against James-Lange

• He disabled the sympathetic nervous system in cats, assuming they would no longer feel emotions, but they still did at the presence of barking dogs.

Cognitive Theories of Emotion

• Two-factor theory of emotion: Emotion is the result of the interaction of physiological arousal and the cognitive label we use to explain our state

• 1. I see a man by the parked car

• 2. I am trembling

• 3. My trembling is caused by fear

• 4. I am afraid!

Body Language

• Body language may provide clues as to the attitude or state of mind of a person. For example, it may indicate aggression, attentiveness, boredom, relaxed state, pleasure, amusement, and intoxication, among many other cues.

• James Borg states that human communication consists of 93 percent body language and paralinguistic cues, while only 7% of communication consists of words themselves;

Crossed Arms

• What do you think this means?

Touching ear or scratching chin

Unfocused eyes, tilt of the head

Swallowing

Blinking a lot

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUXtGQkJcQ0

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgRJ7-s0u7c

Review Questions

• What are the basic principles and key criticisms of James-Lange theory

• How is the sympathetic nervous system involved in emotions?

• What are the basic emotions?

• How do evolutionary psychologists view emotions?