COGNITION VIEWS ON HOW WE THINK AND ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE

What is cognition?  How we think, acquire knowledge, imagine, plan and solve problems.  All functions of the cerebral cortex.  An important aspect deals with our reasoning abilities.

Reasoning  Drawing conclusions or inferences from observations, facts, or assumptions  Crucial to make wise decisions

Formal reasoning  Factors are well known and clearly established  2+2=4  The capitol of Illinois is Springfield.  Snakes lack legs.

algorithms  To solve problems through formal reasoning, we often use an algorithm A step-by-step, routine or mechanical procedure for solving a problem A step-by-step, routine or mechanical procedure for solving a problem Exhausting all the possibilities Exhausting all the possibilities Connecting the TV to the VCR Connecting the TV to the VCR A recipe A recipe

heuristics  But sometimes problems are too hard to pin down or there are too many competing alternatives  In these cases, we use heuristics – intuitive, “rule of thumb” strategies to simplify a problem or guide an investigation

heuristics  What restaurant do we choose?  What’s my next school?  What career is best for me?  Go Fish!  We use past experiences, advice from those we respect, “word of mouth”, to eliminate most possibilities quickly

The Limits of Heuristics  In many situations heuristics are the only way to tackle a complex problem  But they have their shortcomings  Since they rely on assumptions, occasionally they lead to bad decisions and mistakes

Errors in cognition  Although essential, heuristics sometimes lead us astray

Errors  Confirmation Bias We make quick or emotional decisions and then focus only on evidence which confirms our hunch, ignoring evidence to the contrary We make quick or emotional decisions and then focus only on evidence which confirms our hunch, ignoring evidence to the contrary A defendant’s greatest fear

More errors  The Availability heuristic  Strategy of assuming that the number of memories of an event that are available indicates how common the event really is  Leads to illusory correlations  Must look to systematic data  One compelling memory jumps to mind

Availability examples  Million dollar lawsuits  Treacherous Arab-Americans  Lotto winners  Full moon/bizarre behavior connection  Abductions

Hindsight Bias  Years later, we claim that we “knew it all along”.  We didn’t.  Bulls 1992 championship  The White Sox’ magical season  Can prevent us from carefully investigating what happened.

Finally ….  The Sunk Cost Effect  We will often do stupid, illogical things because of money or effort already expended  Throwing good money after bad  Animals and kids just walk away  150,000 soldiers waiting in Kuwait

Why do we gamble?  After all, we know that the odds (Lotto!) are stacked against us  Let us “count the ways” (reasons)  Over-estimation of control  we think we can influence the odds if we have some, or any, control  But not if they are purely random events

Gambling – why?  Big numbers – Little risks  We flock to long-shot bets with small risk  Even if the odds are much worse  We don’t appreciate the difference between 1 in 70,000 and 1 in 7, 000,000 if enough money is dangled in front of us

More on gambling  The Gambler’s Fallacy  The sad fact that we’ve always lost does not mean that someday we’ll win  The law of averages has little effect on truly random events

Old favorites (?)  Intermittent reinforcement – hard to resist, but no certainty of eventual win  Vicarious reinforcement – we see big winners all the time – Why not us?  Sunk cost – we’ll make up all those losses