Cognition (thinking)

1. Cognition (thinking)

2. Just as we saw previously with memory, our minds can play tricks on us when we think as well. • heuristics – mental shortcuts we automatically take when thinking about or evaluating something

3. Availability Heuristic • More frequent cause of death? • strokes all accidents • war asthma • alcohol diabetes • the flu tornadoes • suicide tuberculosis • drowning malaria

4. Availability Heuristic • Higher murder rate? • Flint, Michigan Miami, FL • Chicago, Illinois Memphis, TN • St. Louis, MO Brooklyn, NY • Birmingham, AL Los Angeles, CA • Cleveland, OH Boston, MA

5. Lotto Much?

6. Things That Are More Likely to Happen to You ThanWinning the Lottery • Odds of winning the lottery: about 1 in 176 million • Odds of getting crushed to death by a vending machine: 1 in 112 million • On average, two people in the U.S. are crushed to death underneath vending machines each year. Please snack responsibly. 

7. Things That Are More Likely to Happen to You ThanWinning the Lottery • Odds of winning the lottery: about 1 in 176 million • Odds of becoming president: 1 in 10 million

8. Things That Are More Likely to Happen to You ThanWinning the Lottery • Odds of winning the lottery: about 1 in 176 million • Dying From Bee, Hornet, or Wasp Stings Odds:1 in 6.1 million

9. Things That Are More Likely to Happen to You ThanWinning the Lottery • Odds of winning the lottery: about 1 in 176 million • Dying From Being Left-Handed Odds:  1 in 4.4 million • It’s a right-handed world. Apparently, a fair number of left-handed people die each year from using right-handed products incorrectly.

10. Things That Are More Likely to Happen to You ThanWinning the Lottery • Odds of winning the lottery: about 1 in 176 million • Getting Struck by Lightning • Odds: 1 in 1 million.

11. Things That Are More Likely to Happen to You ThanWinning the Lottery • Odds of winning the lottery: about 1 in 176 million • Dying in an Asteroid Apocalypse Odds: 1 in 12,500 • The good news is that this will probably never happen. That is, until the year 2040, when it’s totally going to happen!

12. Things That Are More Likely to Happen to You ThanWinning the Lottery • SO WHY DO PEOPLE PLAY THE LOTTERY????

13. Availability Heuristic - judging likelihood of events based on how readily they come to mind (memory) • quickly comes to mind  we assume it is common • sometimes true, but not always • often results in errors

14. The Representativeness Heuristic • judge likelihood of things by how well they match prototypes • ignore other info

15. Representativeness Heuristic • Give me your prototype of a trucker • A person is short, slim, and likes to read poetry. • More likely to be a professor of classics at Ivy League university or truck driver? • 40 prf? – 20 short/slim? – 10 like poetry? • 400,000 truckers – 50,000 short/slim? 1/100 like poetry? (500) • odds are 50 to 1 that it’s a truck driver

16. Imagine you work for the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) as a security screener at an airport. For every SEVEN passengers that board a plane you must select ONE passenger to pull aside and search for contraband. Which of these passengers would you select, and why? 4 2 3 1 5 7 6

17. Representative Heuristic and Racial Profiling Many airline passengers support racial profiling because they believe singling out Arab or Muslim people, American or not, will make them safer.  Some Americans speak of "color-blind" national ideals, but at the same time, they say it is OK for police to single out Arabs or Muslims for questioning.  A CNN poll (shown below) showed that Americans supported special measures intended just for those of Arab descent, including Arab-Americans. 

18. Representative Heuristic and Racial Profiling THE ARREST of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. after he was confronted by police while trying to open the front door to his home is the latest reminder that racism is alive and well even in the most wealthy and progressive enclaves of Massachusetts. Although the criminal charges against Gates were dropped yesterday, the incident is the latest clue - for those who need one - that we’re a long way from being a “post-racial’’ society in Massachusetts.

19. Representative Heuristic and Racial Profiling A 64-year-old contractor was pulled over by a sheriff's deputy in December, purportedly for not having a license plate on the trailer affixed to his pickup. Dan Magos, a U.S. citizen since 1967, had a gun for protection inside his truck — which is legal under Arizona law and had never been an issue before with police. He said the deputy made him wait 10 minutes before letting him go with the words: "I don't want you to think this has anything to do with racial profiling."

20. What are the functions of concepts? • A concept is a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, and people. chair

21. What are the functions of concepts? • A concept is a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, and people. • Without concepts, we would need a different name for every object and idea.

22. What are the functions of concepts? • A concept is a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, and people. • The word anger, or the “concept” of anger gives us a lot of information without us having to think a lot. • To further simplify things, we organize concepts into hierarchies.

23. What are the functions of concepts? • Sometimes we form a concept by definition. • Ex. A triangle is a closed three sided figure • More often though, we form our concepts by developing prototypes. • A prototype is a mental image, or “best example” that incorporates all the features we associate with a category

24. What are the functions of concepts? • A prototype is a mental image, or “best example” that incorporates all the features we associate with a category • Ex. Describe an adult

25. What are the functions of concepts? • The further we move away from our prototypes, the more our category boundaries may blur. • Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? • Is a whale a fish or a mammal? • Is a 17 year-old male a man or a boy?

26. Strategies for Solving Problems • Trial and Error – try different approaches randomly until something works • Ex. trying a bunch of different keys on a lock until one works • Algorithms – Step by step method or rule that guarantees a solution. • Ex. P.E.M.D.A.S, Pythagorean theorem • Ex. Grandma’s Mac n Cheese recipe  • Heuristics– A simple thinking strategy that allows us to solve problems more efficiently. We discussed the two types in the previous lesson

27. What strategies assist our problem solving? • Insight – A sudden realization of a solution. “Ah ha” • Ex. the monkeys and the milk crates!

28. What is creativity, and what fosters it? • Creativity – the ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable. • Certain levels of aptitude are necessary, but not sufficient for creativity.

29. Work at your tables • Try to come up with as many non-traditional uses for each item as possible! • Compile a list for each item • BE CREATIVE!!!

30. Obstacles to problem solving • functional fixedness – Tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions. • Ex. You tear the house apart looking for a screwdriver when a coin or a butter knife would have worked.

31. Obstacles to problem solving • Confirmation bias is our tendency to seek evidence that will support our argument/idea/opinion more eagerly than we seek information that will refute our argument/idea/opinion. • Ex. Saddam Hussein and WMD’s • A U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee found that investigators “had a tendency to accept information that supported their presumptions more readily than information which contradicted them.”

32. Obstacles to problem solving • Mental set – Tendency to approach a problem in one specific way (usually a way that has been successful in the past).

33. Mental set – Tendency to approach a problem in one specific way (usually a way that has been successful in the past). • What number is next in the series? 10, 4, 3, 11, 15 • 14 • 1 • 17 • 12 *when spelled out, each number in the series is longer than the other

34. Creative problem solving By moving only one glass, how can you arrange the glasses so the empty ones and full ones alternate? Pour the water from the second glass into the fifth glass

35. Creative problem solving • Something extraordinary happened on the 6th of May, 1978, at 12:34 pm, what was it? • 12:34, 5/6/78

36. Critical Thinking Exercise • Three boxes, one with apples, one with oranges, one with a mix of apples and oranges. 
all the boxes are labeled incorrectly. 
you can pick up just one fruit. 
and tell which box has what fruit.

37. Remember that all boxes are labeled incorrectly. 

The box marked "mixed" is not the mixed box. Pull a fruit from it. Say it's an apple. It must be the "apples" box. 

The box marked "oranges" is not the box with oranges. It's also not the box with apples. It must be the "mixed" box. 

There is one box left. It is neither the "apples" nor the "mixed" box. It must be the "oranges" box.

38. Critical Thinking Exercise • On a wall are 3 standard on/off switches. In another room there are three lightbulbs. You need to figure out which switch goes with which bulb. You can only open the door to the other room once, and cannot touch/change any switches after the door is open (or re-closed, for that matter). Damaging or disassembling the door, walls, or switches is against the rules. • Within these constraints, can you determine with certainty which switch controls the light bulb?

39. Critical Thinking Exercise • Turn on switch "A" for several minutes. Turn it off and turn on switch "B". Open the door and touch the lightbulb. • if the light is on, it is "B" • if the light is off and hot, it is "A" • if the light is off and cold, it is "C"