AP Psychology Thinking

Belief perserverence

clinging to one's initial concepts after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

Trial and Error

Problem solving method that doesn't involve any real strategy or step by step process; just winging it.

Cognitive Approach

School of psychology that emphasizes the importance of thinking and mental processes. Cognitive psychologists examine thinking, memory, and problem solving.

Divergent Thinking

Thinking that is creative, out of the box and results in many possibilities

Convergent Thinking

Thinking that is limited only to available facts and results in one solution

Concept

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Prototype

a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides quick/easy methods for sorting things.

Algorithm

a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.

Insight

a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based solutions. An "aha!" moment

Mental set

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.

Confirmation bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

Intuition

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

Availability heuristic

estimating the likely-hood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind we presume such events are common. For instance, we might cancel our flight and drive to vacation because of recent news reports of plane crashes. In reality, car crashes are more common, but we don't easily think of them.

Representative heuristic

judging the likely-hood of things based on how well they represent, or match, particularly prototypes. More likely to assume someone described as tall and muscular is an athlete than a member of the math team.

Heuristic

problem solving strategy that involves using a rule of thumb or mental short cut such as leaving $2 in tip for every $10 you spend at a restaurant

Fixation

the inability to see a problem from a new perspective, inability to employ a different mindset.

Cognition

the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Overconfidence

the tendency to be more confident than correct; to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements

Functional fixedness

the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving.

Framing

the way an issue is posed; can significantly affect decisions and judgments. For instance, if chips are marketed as 70% fat free, they sound healthier than if they were marketed as containing 30% fat.