Barriers to reasoning rationally

1. Barriers to reasoning rationally When logic and intelligence fail us.

2. Obstacles to reasoning • Need to be right, win an argument • Mental laziness • Not using dialectical thinking • Television?

3. Availability heuristic • The tendency to judge the probability of an event by how easy it is to think of examples or instances. • Examples: • Deaths by tornadoes • Plane crashes • Terrorist attacks • People get worked up over events that are unlikely to happen, yet ignore dangers that are harder to visualize, yet happen more often.

4. Confirmation bias • The tendency to look for or pay attention only to information that confirms one’s own belief. • Find fault with evidence or arguments that point them in a different direction. • Examples: • Politicians • Corrupt police officers • Bad jury members • Do not use dialectical reasoning

5. Mental set biases • Mental set – The tendency to solve problems using procedures that worked before on similar problems. • Mental sets can be useful because they make learning and problem solving efficient. • Problems with mental sets - Not being able to solve a new problem, because you can only think of ways you have solved things before. • Examples: • Child pulling on door • Early astronomers – everything revolves around Earth

6. Hindsight bias • The tendency to overestimate one’s ability to have predicted an event once the outcome is known. • I knew it all along. • See an event that occurred as having been inevitable. • Winner of an election • Doctor knowing what caused a patient’s death • A historical event • Personal examples

7. Cognitive dissonance • A state of tension that occurs when a person simultaneously holds two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent, or when a person’s belief is incongruent with his or her behavior. • Tension is uncomfortable, so we are motivated to reduce it. • People will resist or rationalize information that conflicts with their ideas. • Smokers • Tanners • Civil War South • “All men are created equal”

8. When do we try to reduce dissonance? • When you need to justify a choice or decision you made freely • Buyers remorse • When your actions violate your self-concept • Are you nice, funny, smart, etc. What happens when you are not? • When you put a lot of effort into a decision, and the results are not as great as you wanted • Justification of effort – the harder you work to reach a goal, the more you will try to convince yourself that you value the goal, even if it is not so great. • Hazing, military

9. What we do to reduce dissonanceJUSTIFYING!!!! • Example: Smoker who knows that it is harmful, but feels that it helps handle stress. Plus they are addicted. • Change conflicting behavior to make it match attitude • Quit smoking • Change conflicting cognition to justify behavior • Smoking is not that bad, research is wrong (confirmation bias) • Form new cognition to justify behavior • Form a new attitude that smoking “light” cigarettes will reduce his health risks. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp39qSdyTc4

10. How do we avoid cognitive biases? • When people make important decisions, they are likely to use dialectical thinking. • When people complete tasks they have expertise in, biases are diminished. • Once we understand a bias, we may be able to diminish it! • Some people have the ability to think more clearly than others… • Are they more intelligent???