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Test – Module 8: Thinking and Intelligence

8.1 Thinking and Problem Solving

Learning Objectives

  • Distinguish between concepts and prototypes
  • Explain the difference between natural and artificial concepts
  • Describe problem solving strategies, including algorithms and heuristics
  • Explain some common roadblocks to effective problem solving

Why It Matters: Thinking and Intelligence

Three side by side images are shown. On the left is a person lying in the grass with a book, looking off into the distance. In the middle is a sculpture of a person sitting on rock, with chin rested on hand, and the elbow of that hand rested on knee. The third is a drawing of a person sitting cross-legged with his head resting on his hand, elbow on knee.
Figure 1. Thinking is an important part of our human experience, and one that has captivated people for centuries. Today, it is one area of psychological study. The 19th-century Girl with a Book by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior, the 20th-century sculpture The Thinker by August Rodin, and Shi Ke’s 10th-century painting Huike Thinking all reflect the fascination with the process of human thought. (credit “middle”: modification of work by Jason Rogers; credit “right”: modification of work by Tang Zu-Ming)

Why is it so difficult to break habits—like reaching for your ringing phone even when you shouldn’t, such as when you’re driving? How does a person who has never seen or touched snow in real life develop an understanding of the concept of snow? How do young children acquire the ability to learn language with no formal instruction? Psychologists who study thinking explore questions like these.

Cognitive psychologists also study intelligence. What is intelligence, and how does it vary from person to person? Are “street smarts” a kind of intelligence, and if so, how do they relate to other types of intelligence? What does an IQ test really measure? These questions and more will be explored in this module as you study thinking and intelligence.

As a part of this discussion, we will consider thinking and briefly explore the development and use of language. We will also discuss problem solving and creativity, intelligence testing, and how our biology and environments interact to affect intelligence. After finishing this module, you will have a greater appreciation of the higher-level cognitive processes that contribute to our distinctiveness as a species.

Introduction to Thinking and Problem-Solving

What you’ll learn to do: describe cognition and problem-solving strategies

A man sitting down in "The Thinker" pose.

Imagine all of your thoughts as if they were physical entities, swirling rapidly inside your mind. How is it possible that the brain is able to move from one thought to the next in an organized, orderly fashion? The brain is endlessly perceiving, processing, planning, organizing, and remembering—it is always active. Yet, you don’t notice most of your brain’s activity as you move throughout your daily routine. This is only one facet of the complex processes involved in cognition. Simply put, cognition is thinking, and it encompasses the processes associated with perception, knowledge, problem solving, judgment, language, and memory. Scientists who study cognition are searching for ways to understand how we integrate, organize, and utilize our conscious cognitive experiences without being aware of all of the unconscious work that our brains are doing (for example, Kahneman, 2011).

What Is Cognition?

Upon waking each morning, you begin thinking—contemplating the tasks that you must complete that day. In what order should you run your errands? Should you go to the bank, the cleaners, or the grocery store first? Can you get these things done before you head to class or will they need to wait until school is done? These thoughts are one example of cognition at work. Exceptionally complex, cognition is an essential feature of human consciousness, yet not all aspects of cognition are consciously experienced. Cognitive psychology is the field of psychology dedicated to examining how people think. It attempts to explain how and why we think the way we do by studying the interactions among human thinking, emotion, creativity, language, and problem solving, in addition to other cognitive processes. Cognitive psychologists strive to determine and measure different types of intelligence, why some people are better at problem solving than others, and how emotional intelligence affects success in the workplace, among countless other topics. They also sometimes focus on how we organize thoughts and information gathered from our environments into meaningful categories of thought, which will be discussed later.

Categories and Concepts

A category is a set of objects that can be treated as equivalent in some way. For example, consider the following categories: trucks, wireless devices, weddings, psychopaths, and trout. Although the objects in a given category are different from one another, they have many commonalities. When you know something is a truck, you know quite a bit about it. Remember, the psychology of categories concerns how people learn and use informative categories such as trucks or psychopaths. The mental representations we form of categories are called concepts. There is a category of trucks in the world, and you also have a concept of trucks in your head. We assume that people’s concepts correspond more or less closely to the actual category, but it can be useful to distinguish the two, as when someone’s concept is not really correct.

Concepts and Prototypes

The human nervous system is capable of handling endless streams of information. The senses serve as the interface between the mind and the external environment, receiving stimuli and translating it into nerve impulses that are transmitted to the brain. The brain then processes this information and uses the relevant pieces to create thoughts, which can then be expressed through language or stored in memory for future use. To make this process more complex, the brain does not gather information from external environments only. When thoughts are formed, the brain also pulls information from emotions and memories (Figure 1). Emotion and memory are powerful influences on both our thoughts and behaviors.

The outline of a human head is shown. There is a box containing “Information, sensations” in front of the head. An arrow from this box points to another box containing “Emotions, memories” located where the person’s brain would be. An arrow from this second box points to a third box containing “Thoughts” behind the head.
Figure 1. Sensations and information are received by our brains, filtered through emotions and memories, and processed to become thoughts.

In order to organize this staggering amount of information, the brain has developed a file cabinet of sorts in the mind. The different files stored in the file cabinet are called concepts. Concepts are categories or groupings of linguistic information, images, ideas, or memories, such as life experiences. Concepts are, in many ways, big ideas that are generated by observing details, and categorizing and combining these details into cognitive structures. You use concepts to see the relationships among the different elements of your experiences and to keep the information in your mind organized and accessible.

Concepts are informed by our semantic memory (you will learn more about this concept when you study memory) and are present in every aspect of our lives; however, one of the easiest places to notice concepts is inside a classroom, where they are discussed explicitly. When you study United States history, for example, you learn about more than just individual events that have happened in America’s past. You absorb a large quantity of information by listening to and participating in discussions, examining maps, and reading first-hand accounts of people’s lives. Your brain analyzes these details and develops an overall understanding of American history. In the process, your brain gathers details that inform and refine your understanding of related concepts like democracy, power, and freedom.

Concepts can be complex and abstract, like justice, or more concrete, like types of birds. In psychology, for example, Piaget’s stages of development are abstract concepts. Some concepts, like tolerance, are agreed upon by many people because they have been used in various ways over many years. Other concepts, like the characteristics of your ideal friend or your family’s birthday traditions, are personal and individualized. In this way, concepts touch every aspect of our lives, from our many daily routines to the guiding principles behind the way governments function.

Concepts are at the core of intelligent behavior. We expect people to be able to know what to do in new situations and when confronting new objects. If you go into a new classroom and see chairs, a blackboard, a projector, and a screen, you know what these things are and how they will be used. You’ll sit on one of the chairs and expect the instructor to write on the blackboard or project something onto the screen. You do this even if you have never seen any of these particular objects before, because you have concepts of classrooms, chairs, projectors, and so forth, that tell you what they are and what you’re supposed to do with them. Furthermore, if someone tells you a new fact about the projector—for example, that it has a halogen bulb—you are likely to extend this fact to other projectors you encounter. In short, concepts allow you to extend what you have learned about a limited number of objects to a potentially infinite set of entities.

A photograph of Mohandas Gandhi is shown. There are several people walking with him.
Figure 2. In 1930, Mohandas Gandhi led a group in peaceful protest against a British tax on salt in India.

Another technique used by your brain to organize information is the identification of prototypes for the concepts you have developed. A prototype is the best example or representation of a concept. For example, for the category of civil disobedience, your prototype could be Rosa Parks. Her peaceful resistance to segregation on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, is a recognizable example of civil disobedience. Or your prototype could be Mohandas Gandhi, sometimes called Mahatma Gandhi (“Mahatma” is an honorific title) (Figure 2).

Mohandas Gandhi served as a nonviolent force for independence for India while simultaneously demanding that Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian leaders—both Indian and British—collaborate peacefully. Although he was not always successful in preventing violence around him, his life provides a steadfast example of the civil disobedience prototype (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2013). Just as concepts can be abstract or concrete, we can make a distinction between concepts that are functions of our direct experience with the world and those that are more artificial in nature.

link to learning

Test how well you can match the computer’s prototype for certain objects by playing this interactive game, Quick Draw!

Natural and Artificial Concepts

In psychology, concepts can be divided into two categories, natural and artificial. Natural concepts are created “naturally” through your experiences and can be developed from either direct or indirect experiences. For example, if you live in Essex Junction, Vermont, you have probably had a lot of direct experience with snow. You’ve watched it fall from the sky, you’ve seen lightly falling snow that barely covers the windshield of your car, and you’ve shoveled out 18 inches of fluffy white snow as you’ve thought, “This is perfect for skiing.” You’ve thrown snowballs at your best friend and gone sledding down the steepest hill in town. In short, you know snow. You know what it looks like, smells like, tastes like, and feels like. If, however, you’ve lived your whole life on the island of Saint Vincent in the Caribbean, you may never have actually seen snow, much less tasted, smelled, or touched it. You know snow from the indirect experience of seeing pictures of falling snow—or from watching films that feature snow as part of the setting. Either way, snow is a natural concept because you can construct an understanding of it through direct observations or experiences of snow (Figure 3).

Photograph A shows a snow covered landscape with the sun shining over it. Photograph B shows a sphere shaped object perched atop the corner of a cube shaped object. There is also a triangular object shown.
Figure 3. (a) Our concept of snow is an example of a natural concept—one that we understand through direct observation and experience. (b) In contrast, artificial concepts are ones that we know by a specific set of characteristics that they always exhibit, such as what defines different basic shapes. (credit a: modification of work by Maarten Takens; credit b: modification of work by “Shayan (USA)”/Flickr)

An artificial concept, on the other hand, is a concept that is defined by a specific set of characteristics. Various properties of geometric shapes, like squares and triangles, serve as useful examples of artificial concepts. A triangle always has three angles and three sides. A square always has four equal sides and four right angles. Mathematical formulas, like the equation for area (length × width) are artificial concepts defined by specific sets of characteristics that are always the same. Artificial concepts can enhance the understanding of a topic by building on one another. For example, before learning the concept of “area of a square” (and the formula to find it), you must understand what a square is. Once the concept of “area of a square” is understood, an understanding of area for other geometric shapes can be built upon the original understanding of area. The use of artificial concepts to define an idea is crucial to communicating with others and engaging in complex thought. According to Goldstone and Kersten (2003), concepts act as building blocks and can be connected in countless combinations to create complex thoughts.

Schemata

A schema is a mental construct consisting of a cluster or collection of related concepts (Bartlett, 1932). There are many different types of schemata, and they all have one thing in common: schemata are a method of organizing information that allows the brain to work more efficiently. When a schema is activated, the brain makes immediate assumptions about the person or object being observed.

There are several types of schemata. A role schema makes assumptions about how individuals in certain roles will behave (Callero, 1994). For example, imagine you meet someone who introduces himself as a firefighter. When this happens, your brain automatically activates the “firefighter schema” and begins making assumptions that this person is brave, selfless, and community-oriented. Despite not knowing this person, already you have unknowingly made judgments about him. Schemata also help you fill in gaps in the information you receive from the world around you. While schemata allow for more efficient information processing, there can be problems with schemata, regardless of whether they are accurate: Perhaps this particular firefighter is not brave, he just works as a firefighter to pay the bills while studying to become a children’s librarian.

An event schema, also known as a cognitive script, is a set of behaviors that can feel like a routine. Think about what you do when you walk into an elevator (Figure 4). First, the doors open and you wait to let exiting passengers leave the elevator car. Then, you step into the elevator and turn around to face the doors, looking for the correct button to push. You never face the back of the elevator, do you? And when you’re riding in a crowded elevator and you can’t face the front, it feels uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Interestingly, event schemata can vary widely among different cultures and countries. For example, while it is quite common for people to greet one another with a handshake in the United States, in Tibet, you greet someone by sticking your tongue out at them, and in Belize, you bump fists (Cairns Regional Council, n.d.)

A crowded elevator is shown. There are many people standing close to one another.
Figure 4. What event schema do you perform when riding in an elevator? (credit: “Gideon”/Flickr)

Because event schemata are automatic, they can be difficult to change. Imagine that you are driving home from work or school. This event schema involves getting in the car, shutting the door, and buckling your seatbelt before putting the key in the ignition. You might perform this script two or three times each day. As you drive home, you hear your phone’s ring tone. Typically, the event schema that occurs when you hear your phone ringing involves locating the phone and answering it or responding to your latest text message. So without thinking, you reach for your phone, which could be in your pocket, in your bag, or on the passenger seat of the car. This powerful event schema is informed by your pattern of behavior and the pleasurable stimulation that a phone call or text message gives your brain. Because it is a schema, it is extremely challenging for us to stop reaching for the phone, even though we know that we endanger our own lives and the lives of others while we do it (Neyfakh, 2013) (Figure 5).

A person’s right hand is holding a cellular phone. The person is in the driver’s seat of an automobile while on the road.
Figure 5. Texting while driving is dangerous, but it is a difficult event schema for some people to resist.

Remember the elevator? It feels almost impossible to walk in and not face the door. Our powerful event schema dictates our behavior in the elevator, and it is no different with our phones. Current research suggests that it is the habit, or event schema, of checking our phones in many different situations that makes refraining from checking them while driving especially difficult (Bayer & Campbell, 2012). Because texting and driving has become a dangerous epidemic in recent years, psychologists are looking at ways to help people interrupt the “phone schema” while driving. Event schemata like these are the reason why many habits are difficult to break once they have been acquired. As we continue to examine thinking, keep in mind how powerful the forces of concepts and schemata are to our understanding of the world.

Watch It

Watch this CrashCourse video to see more examples of concepts and prototypes. You’ll also get a preview on other key topics in cognition, including problem-solving strategies like algorithms and heuristics.

You can view the transcript for “Cognition – How Your Mind Can Amaze and Betray You: Crash Course Psychology #15” here (opens in new window).

Think It Over

Think about a natural concept that you know fully but that would be difficult for someone else to understand. Why it would be difficult to explain?

Solving Problems

People face problems every day—usually, multiple problems throughout the day. Sometimes these problems are straightforward: To double a recipe for pizza dough, for example, all that is required is that each ingredient in the recipe be doubled. Sometimes, however, the problems we encounter are more complex. For example, say you have a work deadline, and you must mail a printed copy of a report to your supervisor by the end of the business day. The report is time-sensitive and must be sent overnight. You finished the report last night, but your printer will not work today. What should you do? First, you need to identify the problem and then apply a strategy for solving the problem.

Problem-Solving Strategies

When you are presented with a problem—whether it is a complex mathematical problem or a broken printer, how do you solve it? Before finding a solution to the problem, the problem must first be clearly identified. After that, one of many problem solving strategies can be applied, hopefully resulting in a solution.

A problem-solving strategy is a plan of action used to find a solution. Different strategies have different action plans associated with them. For example, a well-known strategy is trial and error. The old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” describes trial and error. In terms of your broken printer, you could try checking the ink levels, and if that doesn’t work, you could check to make sure the paper tray isn’t jammed. Or maybe the printer isn’t actually connected to your laptop. When using trial and error, you would continue to try different solutions until you solved your problem. Although trial and error is not typically one of the most time-efficient strategies, it is a commonly used one.

Table 1. Problem-Solving Strategies
Method Description Example
Trial and error Continue trying different solutions until problem is solved Restarting phone, turning off WiFi, turning off bluetooth in order to determine why your phone is malfunctioning
Algorithm Step-by-step problem-solving formula Instruction manual for installing new software on your computer
Heuristic General problem-solving framework Working backwards; breaking a task into steps

Another type of strategy is an algorithm. An algorithm is a problem-solving formula that provides you with step-by-step instructions used to achieve a desired outcome (Kahneman, 2011). You can think of an algorithm as a recipe with highly detailed instructions that produce the same result every time they are performed. Algorithms are used frequently in our everyday lives, especially in computer science. When you run a search on the Internet, search engines like Google use algorithms to decide which entries will appear first in your list of results. Facebook also uses algorithms to decide which posts to display on your newsfeed. Can you identify other situations in which algorithms are used?

A heuristic is another type of problem solving strategy. While an algorithm must be followed exactly to produce a correct result, a heuristic is a general problem-solving framework (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). You can think of these as mental shortcuts that are used to solve problems. A “rule of thumb” is an example of a heuristic. Such a rule saves the person time and energy when making a decision, but despite its time-saving characteristics, it is not always the best method for making a rational decision. Different types of heuristics are used in different types of situations, but the impulse to use a heuristic occurs when one of five conditions is met (Pratkanis, 1989):

  • When one is faced with too much information
  • When the time to make a decision is limited
  • When the decision to be made is unimportant
  • When there is access to very little information to use in making the decision
  • When an appropriate heuristic happens to come to mind in the same moment

Working backwards is a useful heuristic in which you begin solving the problem by focusing on the end result. Consider this example: You live in Washington, D.C. and have been invited to a wedding at 4 PM on Saturday in Philadelphia. Knowing that Interstate 95 tends to back up any day of the week, you need to plan your route and time your departure accordingly. If you want to be at the wedding service by 3:30 PM, and it takes 2.5 hours to get to Philadelphia without traffic, what time should you leave your house? You use the working backwards heuristic to plan the events of your day on a regular basis, probably without even thinking about it.

Watch It

What problem-solving method could you use to solve Einstein’s famous riddle?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1rDVz_Fb6HQ%3Flist%3DPLUmyCeox8XCwB8FrEfDQtQZmCc2qYMS5a

You can view the transcript for “Can you solve “Einstein’s Riddle”? – Dan Van der Vieren” here (opens in new window).

Another useful heuristic is the practice of accomplishing a large goal or task by breaking it into a series of smaller steps. Students often use this common method to complete a large research project or long essay for school. For example, students typically brainstorm, develop a thesis or main topic, research the chosen topic, organize their information into an outline, write a rough draft, revise and edit the rough draft, develop a final draft, organize the references list, and proofread their work before turning in the project. The large task becomes less overwhelming when it is broken down into a series of small steps.

Everyday Connections: Solving Puzzles

Problem-solving abilities can improve with practice. Many people challenge themselves every day with puzzles and other mental exercises to sharpen their problem-solving skills. Sudoku puzzles appear daily in most newspapers. Typically, a sudoku puzzle is a 9×9 grid. The simple sudoku below (Figure 1) is a 4×4 grid. To solve the puzzle, fill in the empty boxes with a single digit: 1, 2, 3, or 4. Here are the rules: The numbers must total 10 in each bolded box, each row, and each column; however, each digit can only appear once in a bolded box, row, and column. Time yourself as you solve this puzzle and compare your time with a classmate.

A four column by four row Sudoku puzzle is shown. The top left cell contains the number 3. The top right cell contains the number 2. The bottom right cell contains the number 1. The bottom left cell contains the number 4. The cell at the intersection of the second row and the second column contains the number 4. The cell to the right of that contains the number 1. The cell below the cell containing the number 1 contains the number 2. The cell to the left of the cell containing the number 2 contains the number 3.
Figure 1. How long did it take you to solve this sudoku puzzle? (You can see the answer at the end of this section.)

Here is another popular type of puzzle that challenges your spatial reasoning skills. Connect all nine dots with four connecting straight lines without lifting your pencil from the paper:

A square shaped outline contains three rows and three columns of dots with equal space between them.
Figure 2. Did you figure it out? (The answer is at the end of this section.) Once you understand how to crack this puzzle, you won’t forget.

Take a look at the “Puzzling Scales” logic puzzle below (Figure 3). Sam Loyd, a well-known puzzle master, created and refined countless puzzles throughout his lifetime (Cyclopedia of Puzzles, n.d.).

A puzzle involving a scale is shown. At the top of the figure it reads: “Sam Loyds Puzzling Scales.” The first row of the puzzle shows a balanced scale with 3 blocks and a top on the left and 12 marbles on the right. Below this row it reads: “Since the scales now balance.” The next row of the puzzle shows a balanced scale with just the top on the left, and 1 block and 8 marbles on the right. Below this row it reads: “And balance when arranged this way.” The third row shows an unbalanced scale with the top on the left side, which is much lower than the right side. The right side is empty. Below this row it reads: “Then how many marbles will it require to balance with that top?”
Figure 3. The puzzle reads, “Since the scales now balance…and balance when arranged this way, then how many marbles will it require to balance with that top?
Check your answers here.

Were you able to determine how many marbles are needed to balance the scales in the Puzzling Scales? You need nine. Were you able to solve the other problems above? Here are the answers:

The first puzzle is a Sudoku grid of 16 squares (4 rows of 4 squares) is shown. Half of the numbers were supplied to start the puzzle and are colored blue, and half have been filled in as the puzzle’s solution and are colored red. The numbers in each row of the grid, left to right, are as follows. Row 1: blue 3, red 1, red 4, blue 2. Row 2: red 2, blue 4, blue 1, red 3. Row 3: red 1, blue 3, blue 2, red 4. Row 4: blue 4, red 2, red 3, blue 1.The second puzzle consists of 9 dots arranged in 3 rows of 3 inside of a square. The solution, four straight lines made without lifting the pencil, is shown in a red line with arrows indicating the direction of movement. In order to solve the puzzle, the lines must extend beyond the borders of the box. The four connecting lines are drawn as follows. Line 1 begins at the top left dot, proceeds through the middle and right dots of the top row, and extends to the right beyond the border of the square. Line 2 extends from the end of line 1, through the right dot of the horizontally centered row, through the middle dot of the bottom row, and beyond the square’s border ending in the space beneath the left dot of the bottom row. Line 3 extends from the end of line 2 upwards through the left dots of the bottom, middle, and top rows. Line 4 extends from the end of line 3 through the middle dot in the middle row and ends at the right dot of the bottom row.

Pitfalls to Problem Solving

Not all problems are successfully solved, however. What challenges stop us from successfully solving a problem? Albert Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Imagine a person in a room that has four doorways. One doorway that has always been open in the past is now locked. The person, accustomed to exiting the room by that particular doorway, keeps trying to get out through the same doorway even though the other three doorways are open. The person is stuck—but she just needs to go to another doorway, instead of trying to get out through the locked doorway. A mental set is where you persist in approaching a problem in a way that has worked in the past but is clearly not working now. Functional fixedness is a type of mental set where you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for. During the Apollo 13 mission to the moon, NASA engineers at Mission Control had to overcome functional fixedness to save the lives of the astronauts aboard the spacecraft. An explosion in a module of the spacecraft damaged multiple systems. The astronauts were in danger of being poisoned by rising levels of carbon dioxide because of problems with the carbon dioxide filters. The engineers found a way for the astronauts to use spare plastic bags, tape, and air hoses to create a makeshift air filter, which saved the lives of the astronauts.

Link to Learning

Check out this Apollo 13 scene where the group of NASA engineers are given the task of overcoming functional fixedness.

Researchers have investigated whether functional fixedness is affected by culture. In one experiment, individuals from the Shuar group in Ecuador were asked to use an object for a purpose other than that for which the object was originally intended. For example, the participants were told a story about a bear and a rabbit that were separated by a river and asked to select among various objects, including a spoon, a cup, erasers, and so on, to help the animals. The spoon was the only object long enough to span the imaginary river, but if the spoon was presented in a way that reflected its normal usage, it took participants longer to choose the spoon to solve the problem. (German & Barrett, 2005). The researchers wanted to know if exposure to highly specialized tools, as occurs with individuals in industrialized nations, affects their ability to transcend functional fixedness. It was determined that functional fixedness is experienced in both industrialized and nonindustrialized cultures (German & Barrett, 2005).

In order to make good decisions, we use our knowledge and our reasoning. Often, this knowledge and reasoning is sound and solid. Sometimes, however, we are swayed by biases or by others manipulating a situation. For example, let’s say you and three friends wanted to rent a house and had a combined target budget of $1,600. The realtor shows you only very run-down houses for $1,600 and then shows you a very nice house for $2,000. Might you ask each person to pay more in rent to get the $2,000 home? Why would the realtor show you the run-down houses and the nice house? The realtor may be challenging your anchoring bias. An anchoring bias occurs when you focus on one piece of information when making a decision or solving a problem. In this case, you’re so focused on the amount of money you are willing to spend that you may not recognize what kinds of houses are available at that price point.

The confirmation bias is the tendency to focus on information that confirms your existing beliefs. For example, if you think that your professor is not very nice, you notice all of the instances of rude behavior exhibited by the professor while ignoring the countless pleasant interactions he is involved in on a daily basis. This bias proves that first impressions do matter and that we tend to look for information to confirm our initial judgments of others.

Watch IT

Watch this video from the Big Think to learn more about the confirmation bias.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tZvDaPBqAyg%3Frel%3D0

You can view the transcript for “Confirmation Bias: Your Brain is So Judgmental” here (opens in new window).

Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Representative bias describes a faulty way of thinking, in which you unintentionally stereotype someone or something; for example, you may assume that your professors spend their free time reading books and engaging in intellectual conversation, because the idea of them spending their time playing volleyball or visiting an amusement park does not fit in with your stereotypes of professors.

Finally, the availability heuristic is a heuristic in which you make a decision based on an example, information, or recent experience that is that readily available to you, even though it may not be the best example to inform your decision. To use a common example, would you guess there are more murders or more suicides in America each year? When asked, most people would guess there are more murders. In truth, there are twice as many suicides as there are murders each year. However, murders seem more common because we hear a lot more about murders on an average day. Unless someone we know or someone famous takes their own life, it does not make the news. Murders, on the other hand, we see in the news every day. This leads to the erroneous assumption that the easier it is to think of instances of something, the more often that thing occurs.

Watch IT

Watch the following video for an example of the availability heuristic.

You can view the transcript for “Availability Heuristic: Are Planes More Dangerous Than Cars?” here (opens in new window).

Biases tend to “preserve that which is already established—to maintain our preexisting knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and hypotheses” (Aronson, 1995; Kahneman, 2011). These biases are summarized in Table 2 below.

Table 2. Summary of Decision Biases
Bias Description
Anchoring Tendency to focus on one particular piece of information when making decisions or problem-solving
Confirmation Focuses on information that confirms existing beliefs
Hindsight Belief that the event just experienced was predictable
Representative Unintentional stereotyping of someone or something
Availability Decision is based upon either an available precedent or an example that may be faulty

Link to Learning

Learn more about heuristics and common biases through the article, “8 Common Thinking Mistakes Our Brains Make Every Day and How to Prevent Them” by Belle Beth Cooper.

You can also watch this clever music video explaining these and other cognitive biases.

Think It Over

Which type of bias do you recognize in your own decision making processes? How has this bias affected how you’ve made decisions in the past and how can you use your awareness of it to improve your decisions making skills in the future?

Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/choice/choice_blindness.html

Choice Blindness

Some choices are easy (“Do you want pepperoni or anchovies on your pizza?”) and some choices are hard (“Are you going to get Amazon Echo or Google Home?”), but most of us like to think that we “know our own mind”—that is, when we finally make a choice, we are clear about our decision. Research by psychologists in Sweden shows that this confidence in our own self-knowledge may not always be justified.

Choice blindness is the failure to recall a choice immediately after we have made that choice. If you go to an ice cream store, order a chocolate cone, and then accept a strawberry cone without noticing, that is choice blindness. If you go to an electronics store, select the new 55-inch Vizio television, and then fail to notice when they bring out (and expect you to pay for) the far more expensive 55-inch Sony television, that is choice blindness. If you order a burger and fries, and then don’t notice when soup-and-salad is placed in front of you, that is choice blindness.

As you have seen, Johannson, Hall, and their colleagues[1] found a method for inducing choice blindness in a laboratory setting, but they wanted to do more than simply demonstrate that people sometimes forget their choices. As psychological scientists, their goal is to explore an interesting phenomenon (i.e., choice blindness) to understand why it happens and to see if it tells us anything new about the way our minds work.

The Attraction Preference Experiment

You can learn the basics of the experiment conducted by Petter Johannson, Lars Hall and their colleagues by watching the following video[2].

Johannson and Hall were curious to see how often people noticed that there was a mismatch between their choice and the picture they were told they had chosen. Here’s how the experiment worked. Imagine that you are sitting across a table from an experimenter, who is dressed in a long sleeved black shirt. He shows you a pair of pictures of head-and-shoulder shots of two males or two females. On each trial, you indicate which of the two people in the pictures you find more attractive. After you make your choice, the experimenter hands you the card you just pointed at and asks you to explain why you preferred this person.

Except that this didn’t always happen this way. Using a magician’s trick, on some trials, when the experimenter handed you the card, he actually handed you the card you did NOT choose.

Watch this video to see the experimenters explain it.

You can view the transcript for “BBC Choice Blindness” here (opens in new window).

The researchers tested 120 college students (70 female, 50 male). The pictures were all of women. As the video showed, they made their choice and then immediately explained the reasons for their preference. Only 13% of the switches were detected immediately. Approximately 10% more switches were mentioned “retrospectively”, where a participant initially justified choosing the switched face, but later indicated some suspicion that the wrong picture had been presented. Most participants who detected a switch attributed it to a technical error rather than suspecting that it was part of the research procedure.

But is it Real? The Value of Replication

The video you just watched described an experiment with a surprising result: more than 75% of the time, people make a choice and then, without indicating that anything is amiss, they proceed to justify a choice they did not make. But how solid is this study and how much can we believe these results? Maybe the choice blindness experiment reported real results, but (even assuming that the experimenters were completely honest and careful) could this have just been a weird outcome that will never happen again? In other words, is this a reliable result or just a fluke?

There is only one way to determine if a phenomenon is reliable, and that is replication. If you can’t replicate an effect, then you shouldn’t waste people’s time reading about it in a scientific paper.

There are at least three different types of replication.

  1. Direct Replication: Conduct exactly the same study again, usually with new participants from the same population as the original study. A successful replication would produce results similar to those in the original study.
  2. Systematic Replication: Conduct a study that is similar to the original one, but using slightly different methods or stimuli.
  3. Conceptual Replication: Conduct a very different study that still tests the original idea. In the current context, a conceptual replication would test the choice blindness idea using a method that did not involve choosing attractive people.

So, can you believe the choice blindness phenomenon?

Case #1

In the years just before they published their 2005 study, the experimenters conducted two similar studies. For these studies, the pictures were presented on a computer screen, and the computer switched the pictures on the critical trials, so no magic was necessary. The results were very similar to the results of the study reported in the video above.

Case #2

When the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) made the video, they reconstructed the experiment in a form very similar to the original. They reported that 80% of the participants did not notice any switching of pictures—a result very similar to the original. Unfortunately, without a published report of the study, it is impossible to know if the scientific standards of the original study had been maintained.

Case #3

In 2014, researchers at the National University of Singapore reported a study similar to the experiment shown in the video. The stimuli were presented using a computer rather than a live experimenter. In addition to choosing one of the two faces, the participants rated their confidence in their choice and they typed their explanation of their preference. The faces were all of Caucasian women (as in the original study), but the participants were all of Asian descent (ethnic backgrounds: Chinese, Indian, and Vietnamese). Their results were similar to those of the original study.

Case #4

Here is video showing another study by Johannson and Hall. The video has no sound—only subtitles.

Before an election, researchers polled people about their political preferences, selecting either right-wing or left-wing policies. The researchers secretly copied down the opposite of their responses and had the participants explain their answers. Fascinatingly, many people defended the views they said to have disagreed with.

You can view the transcript for “Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions” here (opens in new window).

Link to Learning

Visit this link to watch another video related about conceptual replication, this time related to taste.

From Phenomenon to Scientific Exploration

What you saw in the video is what a scientist would call a phenomenon—that is, a behavior that happens under certain conditions. The video showed that, if an experimenter is tricky enough, he or she can get people to justify choices that they never made. If you find this phenomenon interesting, then it may be worth your time to try to find out why it happens. (If you didn’t think it was interesting, then you will probably move on to find something that inspires you.)

Any of the choices in the list above could explain—fully or in part—the choice blindness phenomenon, but each idea would need to be tested. That is where the science comes in. The starting point for science is something interesting (a surprising phenomenon). If we are motivated to ask why something happened, then we jump into the real work of science: exploring possible explanations.

The next scientific step systematically (i.e., carefully and with specific purposes) changes elements of the procedures or stimuli to see how these changes affect the results. Remember that our dependent variable is the probability that the change in faces will be detected. So now we try to learn more about change blindness by seeing how changing specific details (independent variables) either increase or decrease people’s likelihood of noticing the switch in faces.

Two Variables: Time and Similarity

In the 2005 study, Johansson and Hall looked at two interesting variables that might influence detection of the mismatch. First, how rushed were the participants to make their decision? They gave some people only 2 seconds to choose the more attractive person. Others were given 5 seconds, and another group was given as long as people wanted (free choice). Should more time make someone more likely or less likely to notice that they have been given the picture they did not choose?

The second variable was how similar the two faces were to one another. In some cases, the two faces were similar to each other in general features, while in other cases the two faces were more distinctly different. If the two faces are quite different, how should that affect your ability to notice?

Two sets of images. One shows incredibly similar faces of caucasian women, while the next pair shows dissimilar female faces.
Figure 1. Johansson and Hall wanted to know if people were more likely to notice a similar or dissimilar image when shown a picture they did not chose.

Results

If we put the two manipulated variables (time and similarity) together, that gives us six conditions:

Graph showing the similarity of two faces and the time time choose variables. In any given situation, participates had either 2 seconds to choose similar faces, 2 seconds to choose dissimilar faces, 5 seconds to choose similar or dissimilar faces, and unlimited time to choose similar or dissimilar faces.
Figure 2. The six conditions of the experiment show that people were shown either similar or dissimilar faces, or given various amounts of time.

Try It

In the figure below, adjust the bars to fit your predictions about how often people would notice the picture switch. Higher bars mean people more often noticed that the cards had been switched. Lower bars mean that people made one choice and didn’t notice when they were given the wrong picture. This isn’t easy because you need to take account of the two variables: (1) amount of time looking at the pictures before your choice and (2) similarity of the faces in the pictures.

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/choice_blindness_bars.html

Click here to see the what most people expect the results to be.

Most people make predictions that put the red bars lowest, the purple bars in the middle, and the green bars highest. This supports the idea that the more time you have to look at the pictures, the more likely you are to notice that the picture you have chosen is not the one the experimenter gave you.

People also expect that the switch will be more noticeable if the faces are dissimilar. For example, if we look at the green bars with unlimited time, it makes sense that people will generally notice when the faces have been switched on them, and this is much greater when the two faces are very different (dissimilar condition) than when they are similar (similar condition).

Typical responses showing what people will think about how many will notice that the pictures are switched. When given 2 seconds, maybe 18% will notice which similar faces are shown, but 20% would notice dissimilar faces. Given five seconds, 40% would identify switched similar faces and 50% switched dissimilar faces. With unlimited time, 70% would notice similar faces and 90% dissimilar faces.

Most people find it hard to believe that lots of people will be tricked by the switch in faces, even if the experimenter has good magician skills. So, what did happen?

HERE are the actual results from the study.

Results showing the percentage of participants who noticed the wrong face in the experiment. Given 2 seconds, 10% notice on similar faces and 11% noticed on dissimilar faces; given 5 seconds 15% noticed similar faces and 17% noticed dissimilar, and given unlimited time, 25% noticed the change in both similar and dissimilar faces.

First, people generally did not notice the change in faces. Overall, participants on fewer than 20% of the trials noticed any of the card switches. Most participants simply did not realize that the faces had been switched, and many were either very surprised when they were told what had happened or they simply didn’t believe the experimenters.

There was an effect of time. The red bars (2 seconds to choose) are lower than the purple bars (5 seconds to choose), and the purple bars are lower than the green bars (unlimited time to choose), but the differences are fairly modest. The bigger surprise was the LACK of difference between the similar and dissimilar faces. In all three time conditions, there was no significant difference—barely a measurable difference–between the similar and dissimilar faces conditions.[3]

What Do These Results Tell Us?

With just these results, we are still a long way from understanding choice blindness. The experiment you just read takes us a couple of steps in the right direction. First, the similarity of the faces is (surprisingly) not a particularly influential factor. This does not mean that the case is closed and similarity is unimportant, but it does suggest that confusion due to similarity may not be the whole story.

The amount of time participants had to choose did have a big influence on detection of a switch in faces. When the participants were rushed (2 second condition), the chance of detecting a change was very slight. Given 5 seconds, detection improved, but not by a great amount. Unlimited time to choose made a substantial difference, but detection was still only around 25%. These results suggest that time to choose may be an important factor, but it is not the whole story. Furthermore, we are still not sure what it was about the extra time that led to improved detection. Did more time allow the participants to remember the faces better? Or perhaps their memory for faces was not improved, but they had more time to think of reasons they preferred one person over the other (her earrings, the way her hair flowed, a look in her eyes). These preferred features could signal to them that something was missing when the wrong picture was presented.

If you explore the research literature on choice blindness, you will find that the phenomenon has been studied from many angles. Experiments have been conducted in university laboratories and on the streets of a city in the Netherlands. Choice blindness in the video involved remembering what someone looked like, but choices involving sound, taste, and smell have also produced choice blindness. Even people’s judgments about their own personality and preferences is open to choice blindness. We don’t fully understand when and why choice blindness occurs, but it is an intriguing phenomenon, open to scientific curiosity.

A Final Thought

In a TED talk from 2016, Petter Johannson describes choice blindness to an audience. At the end he acknowledges that choice blindness can make people look silly or worse, but he also believes that this research provides us with an insight about people that may be reason for hope in a world seemingly full of discord and bereft of compromise.

Here are the closing lines from his TED talk:

This [choice blindness] may all seem a bit disturbing. But if you want to look at it from a positive direction, it could be seen as showing: Okay, so we’re all a little bit more flexible than we think. We can change our minds. Our attitudes are not set in stone. And we can also change the minds of others if we can only get them to engage with the issue and see it from the opposite view. … Getting rid of the need to stay consistent is actually a huge relief and makes [social] life so much easier to live.

So the conclusion must be, “Know that you don’t know yourself. Or at least not as well as you think you do.”

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  1. Petter Johannson, Lars Hall, Sverker Sikström, & Andreas Olsson. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310 (7 October 2005), 116-119. ↵
  2. The video is a segment from a BBC video from the science series called Horizons. This particular show was about decision making ↵
  3. The results are more complex than the figure suggests. The data shown above are limited to first detections of the switch in pictures. After people notice that there has been a switch, they tend to be a bit suspicious and they are more vigilant about noticing changes. If all trials are taken into account, the data are still similar to these, but not quite as pretty. See the original paper for all the details. ↵
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