PSYC2001

Cognitive Psychology
Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience
E. Bruce Goldstein (4th Edition)

Visiting Lecturer: Mariyam Nashaya Hassan

Villa College
Agenda
● Discussion of Tutorial
● Student Presentation (Nafha/ Aasiyath)
● Attendance
● Lecture/ Activity
Tutorial Week 13

● Discuss and evaluate gestalt approach to problem solving with examples from your
lived experiences
Student Presentation time!

● Nafha and Aasiyath

Attendances

● Tutorial Attendance
● Class Attendance
Reasoning & Decision Making
Chapter 13
 Reasoning and Decision Making
● DECISIONS—making choices between alternatives.
● The process of drawing conclusions
● Reasoning: Cognitive processes by which people start with
information and come to conclusions that go beyond that information
● Deductive reasoning: involves sequence of statements called
syllogisms.
● Inductive reasoning: arrive at conclusions about what is probably
true, based on evidence.
● Definite conclusions: deductive reasoning
● Probable conclusions: inductive reasoning
Deductive Reasoning
● Drawing a logical conclusion about what must be true from a
set of premises or facts
● Syllogisms: Two premises followed by a conclusion that
describes the relationship between categories in the premises

All birds are animals

All animals eat food
Therefore, all birds eat food
Syllogisms
● A syllogism is valid when its conclusion follows logically from
its premises (if it follows certain forms)

All birds are animals = Valid syllogism

All animals have 4 legs
Therefore, all birds have 4 legs

● A syllogism is sound when its premises are consistent with

facts about the world (e.g. its premises are true) and it is valid
○ All animals have 4 legs=Not true
● Aristotle’s “perfect” syllogism
○ Premise 1: All A are B
○ Premise 2: All B are C
○ Conclusion: Therefore, All A are C

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7NE7apn-PA
Syllogisms
● Conditional syllogisms: Syllogisms where the first premise has
the form “if…, then…”
● Antecedent: The first part of the first premise (“if…”)
● Consequent: The proposition that comes after the
antecedent (“then…”)
If it is raining, then it is cold outside.
Antecedent Consequent
It is raining.
Therefore, it is cold outside.
4 Types of Conditional Syllogisms
● Affirming the antecedent: Stating that the antecedent is true

○ If I study, then I will get a good grade

○ I studied
○ Therefore, I got a good grade
○ Valid syllogism form
4 Types of Conditional Syllogisms
● Denying the consequent: Stating that the consequent is false

○ If I study, then I will get a good grade

○ I didn’t get a good grade
○ Therefore, I didn’t study
○ Valid syllogism form
4 Types of Conditional Syllogisms
● Affirming the consequent: Stating that the consequent is true

○ If I study, then I will get a good grade

○ I got a good grade
○ Therefore, I studied
○ Invalid syllogism form
4 Types of Conditional Syllogisms
● Denying the antecedent: Stating that the antecedent is true

○ If I study, then I will get a good grade

○ I didn’t study
○ Therefore, I didn’t get a good grade
○ Invalid syllogism form
Factors that Affect Deductive Reasoning
● Is this a valid or invalid syllogism?

If today is not Friday, then we If today is Friday, then we will

will not have a quiz in class have a quiz in class
We will not have a quiz in class We will have a quiz in class
Therefore, today is not Friday Therefore, today is Friday
Affirming the consequent =invalid
● Negative syllogisms are more difficult to evaluate than positive
ones
Factors that Affect Deductive Reasoning
● Is this a valid or invalid syllogism?

All nerts are soquerts All ants are insects

All connets are soquerts All bees are insects
Therefore, all nerts are connets Therefore, all ants are bees

● Abstract syllogisms are more difficult to evaluate than concrete

ones
Factors that Affect Deductive Reasoning
● Is this a valid or invalid syllogism?

If I am late for work, then I will speed

I am speeding
Therefore, I am late for work

● Belief-bias effect: People are likely to believe that a syllogism

is valid if the conclusion matches their beliefs, even if the form
is invalid
 Conditional Reasoning: The Wason Four-Card
Problem
● The Wason four-card problem has been used to study how
people think when evaluating conditional syllogisms.
● Effect of using real-world items in a conditional-reasoning
problem
○ Determine minimum number of cards to turn over to test:
If there is a vowel on one side, then there is an even
number on the other side.
Caption: The Wason four-card problem (Wason, 1966).
 The Wason Four-Card Problem
● Falsification principle: to test a rule, you must look for
situations that falsify the rule (exception)
○ Most participants fail to do this
○ When problem is stated in concrete everyday terms,
correct responses greatly increase
 The Wason Four-Card Problem
● Pragmatic reasoning schema: thinking about cause and
effect in the world as part of experiencing everyday life
○ Permission schema: if A is satisfied, B can be carried
out
■ Used in the concrete versions
■ People are familiar with rules
 Evolutionary Perspective on Cognition

● Evolutionary principles of natural selection

● Wason task governed by built-in cognitive program for
detecting cheating
○ Many experiments have provided evidence for and against
these explanations, leaving the controversy about how to
explain the Wason problem still unresolved.
 Inductive Reasoning
● Premises are based on observation, and we generalize from
these cases to more general conclusions with varying
degrees of certainty
 Inductive Reasoning
● Strength of argument
○ Representativeness of observations
○ Number of observations
○ Quality of observations
 ACTIVITY: Which argument is stronger? Why?

1. Observation: All sushi places I’ve seen in Vancouver charge a lot for
sashimi. When I visited my family in Ottawa, the sashimi was expensive too.

Conclusion: All sushi places charge a lot for sashimi.

2. Observation: Here in Ottawa, the sun has risen every morning.

Conclusion: The sun is going to rise in Ottawa tomorrow.
 Inductive Reasoning
● Used to make scientific discoveries
○ Hypotheses and general conclusions

● Used in everyday life

○ Make a prediction about what will happen based on
observation about what has happened in the past
 Factors That Contribute To The Strength Of An
Inductive Argument

● Representativeness of observations: How well do the observations about a

particular category represent all of the members of that category?

● Number of observations: Adding more observations would strengthen it further.

● Quality of the evidence: Stronger evidence results in stronger conclusions.

 Heuristics
● Availability heuristic: events more easily remembered are
judged as being more probable than those less easily
remembered

● Is it easier to die from a car accident or a plane crash?

Caption: Likely-causes-of-death experiment results. Pairs of “causes of death” are listed
below next to the graph, with the least likely cause on the left. The number in parentheses on
the right indicates how many more times more people were actually killed by the cause on
the right. The bars in the graph indicate the number of people who judged the least likely
alternative in each pair as causing the most deaths. (Adapted from Lichtenstein et al., 1978).
 Heuristics
● Illusory correlations: correlation appears to exist, but either
does not exist or is much weaker than assumed
○ Stereotypes: an oversimplified generalization about a
group or class of people that often focuses on the
negative.
 Heuristics

● Representativeness Heuristic: the probability that A comes

from B can be determined by how well A resembles
properties of B
○ Use base rate information if it is all that is available
○ Use descriptive information if available and disregard
base rate information
 Heuristics
● Violation of Conjunction rule
● Conjunction rule: probability of two events cannot be
higher than the probability of the single constituents
Caption: Because feminist bank tellers are a subset of bank tellers, it is
always more likely that someone is a bank teller than a feminist bank teller.
 Heuristics
● The Confirmation Bias: tendency to selectively look for
information that conforms to our hypothesis and overlook
information that argues against it
 Heuristics
● The Confirmation Bias
● Lord and coworkers (1979)
○ Had those in favor of capital punishment and those
against capital punishment read the same article
■Those in favor found the article in favor
■Those against found the article against
 Decision Making
● Expected utility theory
○ People are rational and if they have all relevant
information they will make a decision which results in the
maximum expected utility
○ Utility refers to outcomes that achieve a person’s goals
 Decision Making

● Focusing illusion: focus on just one aspect of situation and

ignore other aspects that may be important
 Decision Making
● Decisions depend on how choices are presented
○ Opt-in procedure
■active step to be organ donor
○ Opt-out procedure
■Organ donor unless request not to be

Subject’s consent to research participation

Active Consent
Passive consent
 Decision Making
● Risky decisions
○ Risk-aversion strategy used when problem is stated in
terms of gains
○ Risk-taking strategy when problem is stated in terms of
losses
 Decision Making
An experiment by Deborah Kermer and coworkers (2006) demonstrates the
difference between predicted emotions and the actual emotions experienced after
making a decision.

They gave subjects $5 and told them that based on a coin flip they would
either win an additional $5 or lose $3. Subjects rated their happiness before
the experiment started and then predicted how their happiness would change
if they won the coin toss (gain $5, so they have $10) or lost it (lose $3, so they
have $2). -Notice that before the experiment, the subjects predicted that the
negative effect of losing $3 would be greater than the positive effect of
winning $5 -. So, after their gamble, the positive effect of winning and
negative effect of losing turned out to be about equal
 Decision Making

● Framing effect: decisions are influenced by how a decisions

is stated
○ Can highlight one aspect of situation
 Decision Making

● Decision-making process includes looking for justification, so

a rationale presented with decision
 In Conclusion...

● We're only human... therefore our thinking is very flawed.

● Be careful to make sure that when you use a heuristic, it's not leading
you down a dangerous path.