PSYC 101 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Functional Fixedness, Availability Heuristic, Inductive Reasoning
Document Summary
Mental categories used to group objects, events, and characteristics. Allow generalization of ideas across things that have common qualities. Provide clues about how to react to particular object or experience. The structure of concepts in part includes the prototype model: when evaluating whether a given item reflects a certain concept, people compare the item with the most typical item(s) in that category. Finding appropriate way to attain goal which is not readily available, usually via the following process: Functional fixedness - failure to solve problem due to fixedness on usual function of something. Effective problem solving often necessitates trying something new. Reasoning - mental activity of transforming information to reach conclusions. Inductive reasoning - reasoning from specific observations to make generalizations. Deductive reasoning - reasoning from a general case that we know to be true to a specific instance. Decision making - evaluating alternatives and choosing among them. Automatic - involves processing that is rapid, heuristic, and intuitive.
