PSYC 2040 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Hypothesis, Wason Selection Task, Inductive Reasoning
17 views2 pages
Published on 28 Jan 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Deductive Reasoning
•Inferring specific instances from general principles
oCategorical Syllogism
•An argument describing the relations between categories of
things
–Premise 1: All A are B All VWs are reliable.
–Premise 2: C is an A The Beetle is a VW.
–Conclusion: C is B The Beetle is reliable.
oConditional Syllogism
•An argument describing the conditional relations between
events
–Premise 1: If P then Q If it is a VW, then it is
reliable.
–Premise 2: P is true The Beetle is a VW.
–Conclusion: Q is true The Beetle is reliable.
Errors in Deductive Reasoning
•Social Contract Theory (Tooby & Cosmides)
oEvolutionary selection pressures have equipped us with a “cheater
detection mechanism”—an innate set of inferential rules that help us
to detect the violation of social contracts
oEvidence: Wason Selection Task performance improves when the task
is framed in terms of contract violation
Inductive Reasoning
•Inferring general principles from specific instances
oGeneral Induction: known instances → *all* instances
oSpecific Induction: some instances → other instances
oHypothesis—a proposition that can be evaluated or tested by gathering
evidence to support or refute it
oNo inductive process can ever be certain: we cannot know all the
instances that may exist, any one of which may disprove the
generalization
Errors in Inductive Reasoning
•Confirmation Bias
oThe disinclination to seek evidence that would indicate whether a
hypothesis is false
oE.g., the Wason 2–4–6 Task
•Participant’s goal: Discover the rule
•“Even numbers increasing by two:” e.g., 8–10–12
•“Any set of numbers increasing by two:” e.g., 7–9–11
•Participants then switch from confirm to disconfirm, and soon
discover the surprisingly simple rule: “Numbers of increasing
magnitude”
Analogical Reasoning
•A special kind of inductive reasoning; the process of applying knowledge from
domain (“the source”) to another domain (“the target”).