module 26
To judge the likelihood of something by intuitively comparing it to particular prototypes is to use the
representativeness heuristic.
creativity
the ability to produce new and valuable ideas.
overconfidence
the tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.
farming
the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.
Robert Sternberg and his colleagues believe creativity has five components
Expertise, Imaginative thinking skills, A venturesome personality, Intrinsic motivation, A creative environment
summary:insight
DescriptionSudden PowersAha! reaction Provides instant realization of solution PerilsMay not happen
when consumers respond more positively to ground beef described as "75%lean" than to the same product labeled "25% percent fats," they have been influenced by -----
framing
terrorist attack in paris and san bernardio made americans, in the owrds of senator, " really scared adn worried" - and more fearful of being vicitmized by terrorism than of th eother greater threats, such exaggrated fears after dramatic events illustrate the ----- heuristic
availability
Cognitive scientists are also revealing intuition's powers:
-Intuition is analysis "frozen into habit" (Simon, 2001). It is implicit (unconscious) knowledge—what we've recorded in our brains but can't fully explain (Chassy & Gobet, 2011; Gore & Sadler-Smith, 2011). We see this ability to size up a situation and react in an eyeblink in chess masters playing speed chess, as they intuitively know the right move (Burns, 2004). We see it in the smart and quick judgments of experienced nurses, firefighters, art critics, and car mechanics. We see it in skilled athletes who react without thinking. Indeed, conscious thinking may disrupt well-practiced movements, leading skilled athletes to choke under pressure, as when shooting free throws (Beilock, 2010). And we would see this instant intuition in you, too, for anything in which you have developed knowledge based on experience. -Intuition is usually adaptive, enabling quick reactions. Our fast and frugal heuristics let us intuitively assume that fuzzy-looking objects are far away—which they usually are, except on foggy mornings. Our learned associations surface as gut feelings, right or wrong: Seeing a stranger who looks like someone who has harmed or threatened us in the past, we may automatically react with distrust. Newlyweds' implicit attitudes toward their new spouses likewise predict their future marital happiness -Intuition is huge. Unconscious, automatic influences are constantly affecting our judgments (Custers & Aarts, 2010). Consider: Most people guess that the more complex the choice, the smarter it is to make decisions rationally rather than intuitively (Inbar et al., 2010). Actually, in making complex decisions, we sometimes benefit by letting our brain work on a problem without consciously thinking about it (Strick et al., 2010, 2011). In one series of experiments, three groups of people read complex information (for example, about apartments or European football matches). Those in the first group stated their preference immediately after reading information about four possible options. The second group, given several minutes to analyze the information, made slightly smarter decisions. But wisest of all, in several studies, were those in the third group, whose attention was distracted not found the supposed power of unconscious for a time, enabling their minds to engage in automatic, unconscious processing of the complex information. The practical lesson: Letting a problem incubate while we attend to other things can pay dividends (Dijksterhuis & Strick, 2016). Facing a difficult decision involving a lot of facts, we're wise to gather all the information we can, and then say, "Give me some time not to think about this, even to sleep on it." Thanks to our ever-active brain, nonconscious thinking (reasoning, problem solving, decision making, planning) can be surprisingly astute (Creswell et al., 2013; Hassin, 2013; Lin & Murray, 2015).
overconfidence sometimes has adaptive value.
Believing that their decisions are right and they have time to spare, self-confident people tend to live more happily. They make tough decisions more easily, and they seem competent (Anderson et al., 2012). Given prompt and clear feedback we can also learn to be more realistic about the accuracy of our judgments (Fischhoff, 1982). That's true of weather forecasters: Extensive feedback has enabled them to estimate their forecast accuracy ("a 60 percent chance of rain"). The wisdom to know when we know a thing and when we do not is born of experience.
What is cognition, and what are the functions of concepts?
Cognition refers to all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. We use concepts, mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people, to simplify and order the world around us. We form most concepts around prototypes, or best examples of a category.
Creativity is the ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable
Consider Princeton mathematician Andrew Wiles' incredible, creative moment. Pierre de Fermat, a seventeenth-century mischievous genius, had challenged mathematicians of his day to match his solutions to various number theory problems. His most famous challenge—Fermat's last theorem—baffled the greatest mathematical minds, even after a $2 million prize (in today's dollars) was offered in 1908 to whoever first created a proof.
In other studies and in everyday life, people have similarly welcomed belief-supportive evidence—about climate change, same-sex marriage, or politics—while discounting challenging evidence
In the late 1980s, most Democrats believed that inflation had risen under Republican President Reagan (it had dropped). In 2016, two-thirds of Republicans surveyed said that unemployment had increased and the stock market had dropped under President Obama (unemployment had plummeted and the stock market had nearly tripled). In each case, politics overrode facts (Public Policy Polling, 2016). Big time. As an old Chinese proverb says, "Two-thirds of what we see is behind our eyes."
"What is intuition, and how can the availability and representative heuristics influence our decisions and judgments?
Intuition is the effortless, immediate, automatic feelings or thoughts we often use instead of systematic reasoning. Heuristics, such as the representativeness heuristic, enable snap judgments. Using the availability heuristic, we judge the likelihood of things based on how readily they come to mind.
Thinking about other species' abilities brings us back to our initial question: How deserving are we humans of the label Homo sapiens—wise human? Let's pause to give our species some midterm grades.
On decision making and risk assessment, our smart but error-prone species might rate a B-. On problem solving, where humans are inventive yet vulnerable to confirmation bias and fixation, we would probably receive a better mark, perhaps a B+. And on cognitive efficiency and creativity, our quick (though sometimes faulty) heuristics and divergent thinking would surely earn us an A.
What do we know about thinking in other species?
Researchers make inferences about other species' consciousness and intelligence based on behavior. Evidence from studies of various species shows that many other animals use concepts, numbers, and tools and that they transmit learning from one generation to the next (cultural transmission). And, like humans, some other species show insight, self-awareness, altruism, cooperation, and grief.
How do smart thinkers use intuition?
Smart thinkers welcome their intuitions (which are usually adaptive), but also know when to override them. When making complex decisions we may benefit from gathering as much information as possible and then taking time to let our two-track mind process it.
As a perceptual set predisposes what we perceive, a mental set predisposes how we think.
Sometimes this can be an obstacle to problem solving, as when our mental set from our past experiences with matchsticks predisposes us to arrange them in two dimensions.
By touching screens in quest of a food reward, black bears have learned to sort pictures into animal and nonanimal categories, or concepts (Vonk et al., 2012).
The great apes—a group that includes chimpanzees and gorillas—also form concepts, such as cat and dog. After monkeys have learned these concepts, certain frontal lobe neurons in their brain fire in response to new "cat-like" images, others to new "dog-like" images (Freedman et al., 2001). Even pigeons—mere birdbrains—can sort objects (pictures of cars, cats, chairs, flowers) into categories. Shown a picture of a never-before-seen chair, pigeons will reliably peck a key that represents chairs (Wasserman, 1995).
Insight strikes suddenly, with no prior sense of "getting warmer" or feeling close to a solution
When the answer pops into mind (apple!), we feel a happy sense of satisfaction. The joy of a joke may similarly lie in our sudden comprehension of an unexpected ending or a double meaning: "You don't need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice." Comedian Groucho Marx was a master at this: "I once shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know."
Some problems we solve through trial and error.
Thomas Edison tried thousands of light bulb filaments before stumbling upon one that worked. For other problems, we use algorithms, step-by-step procedures that guarantee a solution. But step-by-step algorithms can be laborious and exasperating. To find a word using the 10 letters in SPLOYOCHYG, for example, you could try each letter in each of the 10 positions—907,200 permutations in all. Rather than give you a computing brain the size of a beach ball, nature resorts to heuristics, simpler thinking strategies. Thus, you might reduce the number of options in the SPLOYOCHYG example by grouping letters that often appear together (CH and GY) and excluding rare letter combinations (such as YY). By using heuristics and then applying trial and error, you may hit on the answer. Have you guessed it?1
Creativity like Wiles' is supported by a certain level of aptitude
Those who score exceptionally high in quantitative aptitude as 13-year-olds, for example, are later more likely to create published or patented work (Park et al., 2008; Robertson et al., 2010). Yet there is more to creativity than aptitude, or what intelligence tests reveal. Indeed, brain activity associated with intelligence differs from that associated with creativity (Jung & Haier, 2013). Aptitude tests (such as the SAT) typically require convergent thinking—an ability to provide a single correct answer.
When making each day's hundreds of judgments and decisions (Should I take a jacket? Can I trust this person? Should I shoot the basketball or pass to the player who's hot?), we seldom take the time and effort to reason systematically.
We follow our intuition, our fast, automatic, unreasoned feelings and thoughts. After interviewing policy makers in government, business, and education, social psychologist Irving Janis (1986) concluded that they "often do not use a reflective problem-solving approach. How do they usually arrive at their decisions? If you ask, they are likely to tell you . . . they do it mostly by the seat of their pants."
What factors exaggerate our fear of unlikely events?
We tend to be afraid of what our ancestral history has prepared us to fear, what we cannot control, what is immediate, and what is most readily available. We fear too little the ongoing threats that claim lives one by one, such as traffic accidents and diseases.
We often form our concepts by developing prototypes
a mental image or best example of a category (Rosch, 1978). People more quickly agree that "a crow is a bird" than that "a penguin is a bird." For most of us, the crow is the birdier bird; it more closely resembles our bird prototype. Similarly, for people in modern multiethnic Germany, Caucasian Germans are more prototypically German (Kessler et al., 2010). When something closely matches our prototype of a concept—such as a bird or a German—we more readily recognize it as an example of the concept.
belief perseverance
clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.
availability heuristic
estimating 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.
representativeness heuristic.
estimating 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.
which of the following is NOT a characteristic of a creative person?
extrinsic motivation
why can news be described as "something that hardly ever happens"? how does knowing this helps us assess our fears?
if tragic event such as plane crash makes th enews it is noteworthy and usual, unlike much more common bad events, such as traffic accidents. knwoing this, we can worry less about unlikely events and think more about improving the safety of our everyday activity
Oscar describes his political beliefs as "strongly liberal," but he has decided to explore opposing viewpoints. How might he be affected by confirmation bias and belief perseverance in this effort?
"Oscar will need to guard against confirmation bias (searching for support for his own views and ignoring contradictory evidence) as he seeks out opposing viewpoints. Even if Oscar encounters new information that disproves his beliefs, belief perseverance may lead him to cling to these views anyway. It will take more compelling evidence to change his political beliefs than it took to create them.
fixation
(1) in thinking, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving. (2) in personality theory, according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psy-chosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.
" And consider how the framing of options can nudge people toward beneficial decisions (Bohannon, 2016; Fox & Tannenbaum, 2015; Thaler & Sunstein, 2008):
-Choosing to live or die. Imagine two surgeons explaining the risk of an upcoming surgery. One explains that during this type of surgery, 10 percent of people die. The other explains that 90 percent survive. The information is the same. The effect is not. In real-life surveys, patients and physicians overwhelmingly say the risk is greater when they hear that 10 percent die (Marteau, 1989; McNeil et al., 1988; Rothman & Salovey, 1997). -Becoming an organ donor. In many European countries, as well as in the United States, people renewing their driver's license can decide whether to be organ donors. In some countries, the default option is Yes, but people can opt out. Nearly 100 percent of the people in opt-out countries have agreed to be donors. In countries where the default option is No, most do not agree to be donors (Hajhosseini et al., 2013; Johnson & Goldstein, 2003). -Opting to save for retirement. U.S. companies once required employees who wanted to contribute to a retirement plan to choose a lower take-home pay, which few people did. Thanks to a new law, they can now automatically enroll their employees in the plan but allow them to opt out. Either way, the decision to contribute is the employee's. But under the new "opt-out" arrangement, enrollments in one analysis of 3.4 million workers soared from 59 to 86 percent (Rosenberg, 2010). Britain's 2012 change to an opt-out framing similarly led to 5 million more retirement savers (Halpern, 2015).
For those seeking to boost the creative process, research offers some ideas:
-Develop your expertise. Ask yourself what you care about and most enjoy. Follow your passion by broadening your knowledge base and becoming an expert at something. -Allow time for incubation. Think hard on a problem, but then set it aside and come back to it later. For those with enough knowledge—the needed mental building blocks—a period of inattention to a problem ("sleeping on it") allows for automatic processing to form associations (Zhong et al., 2008). -Set aside time for the mind to roam freely. Creativity springs from "defocused attention" (Simonton, 2012a,b). So detach from attention-grabbing television, social networking, and video gaming. Jog, go for a long walk, or meditate. Serenity seeds spontaneity. -Experience other cultures and ways of thinking. Living abroad sets the creative juices flowing. Controlled studies show that students who have spent time abroad and embraced their host culture are more adept at working out creative solutions to problems (Lee et al., 2012; Tadmor et al., 2012). Even getting out of your neighborhood and exposing yourself to multicultural experiences fosters flexible thinking (Kim et al., 2013; Ritter et al., 2012).
The Aha! moment
A burst of right temporal lobe activity accompanied insight solutions to word problems (Jung-Beeman et al., 2004). The red dots designate EEG electrodes. The light gray lines show the distribution of high-frequency activity accompanying insight. The insight-related activity is centered in the right temporal lobe (yellow area).
What cognitive strategies assist our problem solving, and what obstacles hinder it?
An algorithm is a methodical, logical rule or procedure (such as a step-by-step description for evacuating a building during a fire) that guarantees a solution to a problem. A heuristic is a simpler strategy (such as running for an exit if you smell smoke) that is usually speedier than an algorithm but is also more error prone. Insight is not a strategy-based solution, but rather a sudden flash of inspiration that solves a problem. Obstacles to problem solving include confirmation bias, which predisposes us to verify rather than challenge our hypotheses, and fixation, such as mental set, which may prevent us from taking the fresh perspective that would lead to a solution.
Move away from our prototypes, and category boundaries may blur. Is a tomato a fruit? Is a 16-year-old female a girl or a woman? Is a whale a fish or a mammal?
Because a whale fails to match our mammal prototype, we are slower to recognize it as a mammal. Similarly, when symptoms don't fit one of our disease prototypes, we are slow to perceive an illness (Bishop, 1991). People whose heart attack symptoms (shortness of breath, exhaustion, a dull weight in the chest)don't match their heart attackprototype (sharp chest pain) may not seek help. And when behaviors don't fit our discrimination prototypes—of White against Black, male against female, young against old—we often fail to notice prejudice. People more easily detect male prejudice against females than female against males or female against females (Cunningham et al., 2009; Inman & Baron, 1996). Although concepts speed and guide our thinking, they don't always make us wise.
Anything that makes information pop into mind—its vividness, recency, or distinctiveness—can make it seem commonplace.
Casinos know this. They entice us to gamble by broadcasting wins with noisy bells and flashing lights. The big losses are soundlessly invisible. The availability heuristic can also distort our judgments of other people. If people from a particular ethnic or religious group commit a terrorist act, as seen in pictures of innocent people about to be beheaded, our readily available memory of the dramatic event may shape our impression of the whole group. Terrorists aim to evoke excessive terror. If terrorists were to kill 1000 people in the United States this year, Americans would be mighty afraid. Yet they would have reason to be 30 times more afraid of homicidal, suicidal, and accidental death by guns, which take more than 30,000 lives annually. In 2015 and again in 2016, feared Islamic terrorists shot and killed fewer Americans than did armed toddlers (Ingraham, 2016; LaCapria, 2015). The bottom line: We often fear the wrong things.
Insightful as we are, other cognitive tendencies may lead us astray.
Confirmation bias, for example, leads us to seek evidence for our ideas more eagerly than we seek evidence against them (Klayman & Ha, 1987; Skov & Sherman, 1986). In a now-classic study, Peter Wason (1960) gave British university students a set of three-numbers (2-4-6) and told them the series was based on a rule. Their task was to guess the rule. (It was simple: any three ascending numbers.) Before submitting answers, students generated their own three-number sets, and Wason told them whether their sets conformed to his rule. Once certain they had the rule, they could announce it. The result? Most students formed a wrong idea ("Maybe it's counting by twos") and then searched only for confirming evidence (by testing 6-8-10, 100-102-104, and so forth). Seldom right but never in doubt.
To rein in belief perseverance, a simple remedy exists:
Consider the opposite. When the same researchers repeated the capital-punishment study, they asked some participants to be "as objective and unbiased as possible" (Lord et al., 1984). The plea did nothing to reduce biased evaluations of evidence. They also asked another group to consider "whether you would have made the same high or low evaluations had exactly the same study produced results on the other side of the issue." Having imagined and pondered opposite findings, these people became much less biased.
Some prototypes have social consequences
Consider the reaction of some non-Arab travelers soon after 9/11, when a young male of Arab descent boarded their plane. The young man fit (represented) their "terrorist" prototype, and the representativeness heuristic kicked in. His presence evoked anxiety among his fellow passengers—even though nearly 100 percent of those who fit this prototype are peace-loving citizens. One mother of two Black and three White teens asks other parents, "Do store personnel follow your children when they are picking out their Gatorade flavors? They didn't follow my White kids. . . . When your kids trick-or-treat dressed as a ninja and a clown, do they get asked who they are with and where they live, door after door? My White kids didn't get asked. Do your kids get pulled out of the TSA line time and again for additional screening? My White kids didn't" (Roper, 2016). If people have a prototype—a stereotype—of delinquent Black teens, they may unconsciously use the representativeness heuristic when judging individuals. The result, even if unintended, is racism.
What is creativity, and what fosters it?
Creativity, the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas, correlates somewhat with aptitude, but is more than school smarts. Aptitude tests require convergent thinking, but creativity requires divergent thinking. Robert Sternberg has proposed that creativity involves expertise; imaginative thinking skills; a venturesome personality; intrinsic motivation; and a creative environment that sparks, supports, and refines creative ideas.
summary: Creativity
Description: Ability to innovate valuable ideas Powers; Produces new insights and products Perils:May distract from structured, routine work
summary: Belief perseverance
Description: Ignoring evidence that proves our beliefs are wrong Powers: Supports our enduring beliefs Perils: Closes our mind to new ideas
summary: Framing
Description: Wording a question or statement so that it evokes a desired response Powers:Can influence others' decisions Perils:Can produce a misleading result
summary Intuition
Description: fast, automatic feelings and thoughts PowersIs based on our experience; huge and adaptive Perils: Can lead us to overfeel and underthink
summary:Confirmation bias
Description: tendency to search for support for our own views and ignore contradictory evidence Powers: Lets us quickly recognize supporting evidence Perils: Hinders recognition of contradictory evidence
summary: algorithms
Description:Methodical rule or procedure Powers:Guarantees solution Perils:Requires time and effort
summary; Overconfidence
Description:Overestimating the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments Powers: Allows us to be happy and to make decisions easily Perils: Puts us at risk for errors
summary: Heuristic
Description:Simple thinking shortcut, such as the availability heuristic (which estimates likelihood based on how easily events come to mind) PowersLets us act quickly and efficiently PerilsPuts us at risk for errors
summary: Fixation
Description:inability to view problems from a new angle Powers:Focuses thinking Perils: Hinders creative problem solving
Like humans, other species invent behaviors and transmit cultural patterns to their observing peers and offspring (Boesch-Achermann & Boesch, 1993).
Forest-dwelling chimpanzees select different tools for different purposes—a heavy stick for making holes, a light, flexible stick for fishing for termites, a pointed stick for roasting marshmallows. (Just kidding: They don't roast marshmallows, but they have surprised us with their sophisticated tool use [Sanz et al., 2004]). Researchers have found at least 39 local customs related to chimpanzee tool use, grooming, and courtship (Claidière & Whiten, 2012; Whiten & Boesch, 2001). One group may slurp termites directly from a stick, another group may pluck them off individually. One group may break nuts with a stone hammer, while their neighbors use a wooden hammer. One chimpanzee discovered that tree moss could absorb water for drinking from a waterhole, and within six days seven other observant chimpanzees began doing the same (Hobaiter et al., 2014). These transmitted behaviors, along with differing communication and hunting styles, are the chimpanzee version of cultural diversity.
sychologist Wolfgang Köhler (1925) showed that humans are not the only creatures to display insight.
He placed a piece of fruit and a long stick outside the cage of a chimpanzee named Sultan, beyond his reach. Inside the cage, Köhler placed a short stick, which Sultan grabbed, using it to try to reach the fruit. After several failed attempts, the chimpanzee dropped the stick and seemed to survey the situation. Then suddenly (as if thinking "Aha!"), Sultan 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. Apes have even exhibited foresight by storing a tool they could use to retrieve food the next day (Mulcahy & Call, 2006). (For one example of a chimpanzee's use of foresight, see FIGURE 26.5a.) And apes have displayed an ability to read others' minds—by anticipating where a human will look for an object, even if it's no longer there (Krupenye et al., 2016).
The more we come to appreciate why our beliefs might be true, the more tightly we cling to them.
Once we have explained to ourselves why candidate X or Y will be a better commander-in-chief, we tend to ignore evidence undermining our belief. Once beliefs form and get justified, it takes more compelling evidence to change them than it did to create them. Prejudice persists. Beliefs often persevere.
those who are wrong are especially vulnerable to overconfidence.
One experiment gave students various physics and logic problems. Students who falsely thought a ball would continue following a curved path when rolling out of a curved tube were virtually as confident as those who correctly discerned that the ball, like water from a curled hose, would follow a straight path (Williams et al., 2013).
How are our decisions and judgments affected by overconfidence, belief perseverance, and framing?
Over confidence can lead us to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs. When a belief we have formed and explained has been discredited, belief perseverance may cause us to cling to that belief. A remedy for belief perseverance is to consider how we might have explained an opposite result. Framing is the way a question or statement is presented. Subtle differences in presentation can dramatically alter our responses
concept
a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.
prototypes
a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin).
algorithms
a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier—but also more error-prone—use of heuristics.
heuristics
a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm.
insight
a sudden realization of a problem's solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.
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.
the most systematic procedure for solving a problem is a(n)
algorithm
cognition
all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
Sometimes we puzzle over a problem and the pieces suddenly fall together in a flash of insight—
an abrupt, true-seeming, and often satisfying solution (Topolinski & Reber, 2010). Ten-year-old Johnny Appleton had one of these Aha! moments and solved a problem that had stumped construction workers: how to rescue a young robin from a narrow 30-inch-deep hole in a cement-block wall. Johnny's solution: Slowly pour in sand, giving the bird enough time to keep its feet on top of the constantly rising pile
intuition
an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.
Sometimes our decisions and judgments go awry simply
because we are more confident than correct. Across various tasks, people overestimate their performance (Metcalfe, 1998). If 60 percent of people correctly answer a factual question, such as "Is absinthe a liqueur or a precious stone?" they will typically average 75 percent confidence (Fischhoff et al., 1977). (It's a licorice-flavored liqueur.) This tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and judgments is overconfidence.
a mental grouping of similar things is called
concept
Overconfidence—the bias that Kahneman
if given a magic wand, would most like to eliminate—can feed extreme political views. History is full of leaders who, when waging war, were more confident than correct. One research team tested 743 intelligence analysts' ability to predict future events—predictions that typically are overconfident. Those whose predictions most often failed tended to be inflexible and closed-minded (Mellers et al., 2015). Ordinary citizens with only a shallow understanding of complex proposals, such as for cap-and-trade carbon emissions or a flat tax, may also express strong views. (Sometimes the less we know, the more definite we sound.) Asking such people to explain the details of these policies exposes them to their own ignorance, which in turn leads them to express more moderate views (Fernbach et al., 2013). To confront one's own ignorance is to become wiser.
a major obstacle to problem solving is fixation, whicj is a(n)
inability to view a problem from a new perspective
Intrinsic motivation
is the quality of being driven more by interest, satisfaction, and challenge than by external pressures (Amabile & Hennessey, 1992). Creative people focus less on extrinsic motivators—meeting deadlines, impressing people, or making money—than on the pleasure and stimulation of the work itself. Asked how he solved such difficult scientific problems, Isaac Newton reportedly answered, "By thinking about them all the time." Wiles concurred: "I was so obsessed by this problem that . . . I was thinking about it all the time—[from] when I woke up in the morning to when I went to sleep at night" (Singh & Riber, 1997).
Other animals are surprisingly smart (de Waal, 2016). In her 1908 book, The Animal Mind, pioneering psychologist Margaret Floy Washburn argued that animal consciousness and intelligence can be inferred from their behavior.
n 2012, neuroscientists convening at the University of Cambridge added that animal consciousness can also be inferred from their brains: "Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds," possess the neural networks "that generate consciousness" (Low, 2012). Consider, then, what animal brains can do.
Brain scans (EEGs or fMRIs) show bursts of activity associated with sudden flashes of insight
n one study, researchers asked people to think of a word that forms a compound word or phrase with each of three other words in a set (such as pine, crab, and sauce) and to press a button to sound a bell when they knew the answer. (Need a hint? The word is a fruit.2) A sudden Aha! insight led to about half the solutions. Before the Aha! moment, the problem solvers' frontal lobes (involved in focusing attention) were active.
convergent thinking
narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.
A prime example of fixation is mental set,
our tendency to approach a problem with the mind-set of what has worked for us previously. Indeed, solutions that worked in the past often do work on new problems.
Our overconfidence is startling. Equally so is our belief perseverance
our tendency to cling to our beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. A classic study of belief perseverance engaged people with opposing views of capital punishment (Lord et al., 1979). After studying two supposedly new research findings, one supporting and the other refuting the claim that the death penalty deters crime, each side was more impressed by the study supporting its own beliefs. And each readily disputed the other study. Thus, showing the pro- and anti-capital-punishment groups the same mixed evidence actually increased their disagreement. Rather than using evidence to draw conclusions, they used their conclusions to assess evidence—a phenomenon also known as motivated reasoning.
Imaginative thinking skills
provide the ability to see things in novel ways, to recognize patterns, and to make connections. Having mastered a problem's basic elements, we can redefine or explore it in a new way. Copernicus first developed expertise regarding the solar system and its planets, and then creatively defined the system as revolving around the Sun, not the Earth. Wiles' imaginative solution combined two partial solutions.
A venturesome personality
seeks new experiences, tolerates ambiguity and risk, and perseveres in overcoming obstacles. Wiles said he labored in near-isolation from the mathematics community partly to stay focused and avoid distraction. Such determination is an enduring trait.
A creative environment
sparks, supports, and refines creative ideas. Wiles stood on the shoulders of others and collaborated with a former student. A study of the careers of 2026 prominent scientists and inventors revealed that the most eminent were mentored, challenged, and supported by their colleagues (Simonton, 1992). Creativity-fostering environments support innovation, team building, and communication (Hülsheger et al., 2009). They also minimize anxiety and foster contemplation (Byron & Khazanchi, 2011). While on a retreat in a monastery, Jonas Salk solved a problem that led to the polio vaccine. Later, when he designed the Salk Institute, he provided contemplative spaces where scientists could work without interruption
Psychologists who study cognition focus on
the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating information. One of these activities is forming concepts—mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people. The concept chair includes many items—a baby's high chair, a reclining chair, a dentist's chair—all for sitting. Concepts simplify our thinking. Imagine life without them. We could not ask a child to "throw the ball" because there would be no concept of throw or ball. Instead of saying, "They were angry," we would have to describe expressions, intensities, and words. Concepts such as ball and anger give us much information with little cognitive effort.
When we categorize people,
we mentally shift them toward our category prototypes. Such was the experience of Belgian students who viewed ethnically blended faces. When viewing a blended face in which 70 percent of the features were Caucasian and 30 percent were Asian, the students categorized the face as Caucasian (FIGURE 26.1). Later, as their memory shifted toward the Caucasian prototype, they were more likely to remember an 80 percent Caucasian face than the 70 percent Caucasian face they had actually seen (Corneille et al., 2004). Likewise, if shown a 70 percent Asian face, they later remembered a more prototypically Asian face. So, too, with gender: People who viewed 70 percent male faces categorized them as male (no surprise there) and then later misremembered them as even more prototypically male (Huart et al., 2005).
Expertise—
well-developed knowledge—furnishes the ideas, images, and phrases we use as mental building blocks. "Chance favors only the prepared mind," observed Louis Pasteur. The more blocks we have, the more chances we have to combine them in novel ways. Wiles' well-developed knowledge put the needed theorems and methods at his disposal.
The availability heuristic operates
when we estimate how common an event is based on its mental availability.
Meanwhile, the lack of available images of future climate change disasters
which some scientists regard as "Armageddon in slow motion" —has left many people unconcerned (Pew, 2014a). What's more cognitively available than slow climate change is our recently experienced local weather, which tells us nothing about long-term planetary trends (Egan & Mullin, 2012; Kaufmann et al., 2017; Zaval et al., 2014). Unusually hot local weather increases people's worry about global climate warming, while a recent cold day reduces their concern and overwhelms less memorable scientific data (Li et al., 2011). After Hurricane Sandy devastated New Jersey, its residents' vivid experience of extreme weather increased their environmentalism
It is overconfidence that drives stockbrokers and investment managers to market their ability to outperform stock market averages
which, as a group, they cannot (Malkiel, 2016). A purchase of stock X, recommended by a broker who judges this to be the time to buy, is usually balanced by a sale made by someone who judges this to be the time to sell. Despite their confidence, buyer and seller cannot both be right. And it is overconfidence that so often leads us to succumb to a planning fallacy—overestimating our future leisure time and income (Zauberman & Lynch, 2005). Students and others often expect to finish assignments ahead of schedule (Buehler et al., 1994, 2002). In fact, such projects generally take about twice the predicted time. Anticipating how much more time we will have next month, we happily accept invitations. And believing we'll surely have more money next year, we take out loans or buy on credit. Despite our past overconfident predictions, we remain overly confident of our next prediction.
