Thinking

Cognition - Thinking, knowing and remembering

• Concepts - To think about the world, mental grouping of similar objects, ideas, people
• Like schemas
• Based on prototypes - mental image or best example of category

Solving Problems

• Trial & Error
• Algorithms - Methodical logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.
• Heuristics - Strategy that allows us to make judgement and solve efficiently; shortcut prone to errors
• Insight - Sudden and novel realization of solution to problem

Obstacles

• Confirmation bias - Likelihood to search for info to confirm self perceptions
• Fixation - Cannot see problem from other view
• Mental Set - Likelihood to approach problem in a particular way esp. if it worked in the past.
• Functional Fixedness - Likelihood to think of many things only in terms of their usual functions

Types of Heuristics

• Representativeness - Rule of thumb for judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they match our prototype; can make us forget important info.
• Availability - Est. the likelihood of events based on avail.; memory comes into mind easily = common

--

Overconfidence - Likelihood to be more confident than correct; overestimate accuracy of beliefs and judgements.

Framing - Why issue is posted -> drastically affects decisions and judgements

Belief Bias - Likelihood for one's initial beliefs to distort logical reasoning; makes invalid conclusions valid or vice versa.

Belief Perseverance - Clinging to your initial conceptions after basis of being discredited.