1. Thinking
m29

3. What are they?
How do you know?

4. What is the most
dog-like dog that
you can imagine?

5. Concepts

6. Concept: a mental grouping of similar objects,
events, ideas, or people
Prototype: a best example of a concept

7. Analogous to
schemas and
hierarchies

8. Solving Problems

9. !?

10. Algorithm 0-0-0, 0-0-1, 0-0-2, etc
Heuristic 21-0-0, 21-0-1, 21-0-2, etc
Insight I remember now!

11. try it . . .
So, let’s
Find a partner for a bit of fun

12. Obstacles to Problem Solving
Confirmation bias
Fixation
Mental set
Functional fixedness

13. Confirmation Bias
After committing to a college, students will
seek others who have made the same
decision — rather than find others who
chose not to attend that college

14. Fixation

15. Mental set
Assume that you’re an engineer of a
passenger train, and you like to count
things...

16. 1. How many stations were there?
2. How many passengers are left on the
train?
3. How old is in the engineer?

17. Mental set
There are six eggs in a basket. Six people
take one of the eggs each. How is it that one
egg can still be left in the basket?

18. Functional fixedness

19. Decisions &
Judgments

20. Heuristic: a rule of thumb, based on
experience, that enables quicker problem solving
List all the English words that start
with the letter Q

22. Three dangers of heuristics:
Representativeness heuristic
Availability heuristic
Overconfidence
Framed decisions

23. Representativeness
Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how
well they fit your prototype
Meeting people in players fromyou might assume
You meet three your dorm, the University’s
that the laid-back, long-haired guy is from
Quidditch team, and they are all really nice; you
California, whereas all Quidditch players are that
might assume that the fast-talking, clean-cut guy
is fromway. York
New

24. Availability
Judging the likelihood of things based on how
easily they come to mind
After hearing about several couples who have
After news of a school shooting in Omaha, you
recently broken up because of infidelity, you
might think the possibility of a similar attack is
might be more suspicious of your own partner
higher than it really is

25. Overconfidence: tendency to overestimate
the accuracy of our own knowledge and judgments
Vacation time vs assignments to do

27. Overconfidence:
Why you shouldn’t show off

28. Framing: the way an issue is posed can
significantly affect decisions and judgments
Condoms are 98% effective
85% lean ground beef
vs
Condoms have a 2% failure rate
15% fat ground beef

29. Belief Bias

30. Belief bias: the tendency for our beliefs
to distort our ability to reason clearly
Beliefs are stronger than logic

31. Belief perseverance: clinging to
one’s initial beliefs despite contrary
evidence