Psychology Unit V: Thinking

THINKING

Prototypes

• best example of a category

Cognition

• thinking, knowing, and remembering

Algorithms

• methodical, logical, rule or procedure that guarantees solving a problem

Concepts

• mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people
• similar to schemas

Heuristics

• a rule - of - thumb strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently 
• a short cut that could be prone to errors

Representative Heuristics

• rule of thumb for judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they match our prototype
• can cause is to ignore important information

Availability Heuristics

• estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in our memory
• if it comes to the mind easily we presume it is common

Insight

• a sudden realization of the solution to a problem

Fixation

• the inability to see a problem from a new perspective

Confirmation Bias

• a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions

Overconfidence

• tendency to be more confident that correct
• to overestimate the accuracy of your beliefs and judgement

Framing

• the way an issue is posed
• it can have drastic effects on your decisions and judgements

Belief Bias

• tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning
• sometimes making invalid conclusions valid or vice versa

Belief Perseverance

• clinging to your initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Mental Set

• tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, especially if it has worked in the past
• may or may not be a good thing

Functional Fixedness

• the tendency to think of thing only in terms of their usual function