PSY 202 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Availability Heuristic, Confirmation Bias, Belief Perseverance
27 Apr 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Cognition, or thinking, can be defined as the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. People tend to organize specific items into mental groupings called concepts. Concepts are typically formed through the development of a best example, or prototype, of a category. Humans are especially capable of using their reasoning powers for coping with new situations. Trial-and-error: when we try each possible solution to a problem. Algorithms: logical, methodical, step-by-step procedures for solving problems. Heuristics: simple thinking strategies that provide us with problem-solving shortcuts. Insight: when you suddenly realize a problem"s solution. Effortless, immediate, and automatic feelings on thoughts characterize our intuition. When we judge the likelihood of something occurring in terms of how readily it comes to mind, we are using the availability heuristic. The availability heuristic leads us to estimate the likelihood of events based on how readily they come to mind.
