What is Cognition?

• Cognition is our ability to think…– Organize thoughts– Solve problems– Think rationally– Imagine an image in our mind– Construct sentences– Make decisions

How are our thoughts organized?

• Schema– Mental framework to help us organize thoughts– Popular Schemas (aka Schemata):• School- What does this include? What is expected of

you? How does it look?• Others?

– “Concepts” are examples of schemata

How are our thoughts organized?• Concepts– Mental categories for classifying specific

people, things, or events– Allow us to group new experiences with old

ones… Like placing all socks (soccer socks, ankle socks, stockings) into one drawer

– Prototypes- a member of a concept with the most typical features• Can help us to make quick decisions about new

experiences.. Does it fit into this concept because it resembles the stereotype?

• “Protypical” genius… does the jock “align”? • Stereotypes?

Concepts and Prototypes

• Which do you see as the most “typical” example of the concept dog?

Schema: Pets• Includes:– Responsibility, dog, cat, hamster, pet store, walks,

feeding, etc.– Based on your experiences as well as

understanding you’ve gained from elsewhere (i.e. society)

– Concept of “dog” appears in your schema of pet, and functions as a schema of its own.

Part 1: Decision Making

Journal:1. What are some decisions you’ve had to make

recently?2. How do you go about making decisions?

a) For example, are you more emotional or rational? Does it depend? What factors influence this?

3. Are you “good” at making decisions? Example?

Decision-Making Activity

What factors govern our decision-making and what thoughts accompany these decisions?• BBC: How to Make Better Decisions• NPR: Paralysis by Analysis (Jonah Lehrer)• Ted Talks: The Paradox of Choice (Schwartz)• Ted Talks: Why do we Make Bad Decisions?

(Gilbert)

BBC: How to Make Better Decisions

• Using equations• Effect of perceived loss• Factors outside of our conscious (temperature

of beverage)• Choice blindness- Justifying our choices even

when we don’t actually make them.

NPR: Paralysis by Analysis (Jonah Lehrer)

• Physiological mechanisms:– Dopamine

• Where is the reward? Patterns, etc.

– Amygdala• Emotion- the “elephant”

– Frontal Cortex• Executive Functioning- the “charioteer”

• Impulse vs. PFC control- Emotion vs. Rationality?• Overloading working memory and exhausting mental resources

– Exhausting our PFC– Limited capacity– Amount of information is overwhelming

Ted Talks: The Paradox of Choice (Schwartz)

• Choice doesn’t lead to more welfare• Increases:– Dissatisfaction– Counterfactual thinking– Blame/guilt– Expectations, leading to more let-down-

• “Everyone needs a fish bowl”

Ted Talks: Why do we Make Bad Decisions? (Gilbert)

• Errors in decision-making– Over- or under- estimating odds and value

• Terrible at assessing value and predicting future pain/pleasure

Decision-Making: What factors should we keep in mind in the future?

Brainstorm with a partner and answer questions #2 and #3.

Decisions-making strategies: Keep these in mind and employ them in *appropriate* scenarios

• Compensatory Model– Rational decision-making model in which choices are

systematically evaluated on various criteria – i.e. pros and cons, ratings– Deciding on college.. What else?

• Non-compensatory– “going with your gut”– Role of emotion/intuition– Not willing to allow one feature your decision “make up for”

another, lacking feature of your decision– Deciding on cheeseburger or nachos… what else?

Decision-making shortcuts- Beware!!!

• Representativeness– A heuristic by which a new situation is judged on the

basis of its resemblance to a stereotypical model– Who is sensitive, smart, and creative: football player or

stage actor?• Availability (recall: Dr. Gilbert)

– A judgment or decision is based on information that is most easily retrieved from memory

– How fresh is something in your mind?– Are there more words that start with “r” or have “r” as

the third letter? (3:40)

– Jackie was cruel to you three weeks ago but did you a favor yesterday… which is more “available”?

Other factors that influence our decisions and judgments- Beware!

• Confirmation Bias– The tendency to look for evidence in support of a belief

and to ignore evidence that would disprove this believe.– “All short people have “Napoleon Complexes”– Other stereotypes??

• Framing– Perspective or phrasing of information that is used to

make a decision (how it is presented)“This contraceptive is 90% effective” vs.

“You have a 1 in 10 chance of getting pregnant”– You are at risk of losing something vs. have the

opportunity to gain something? (i.e. gambling)

Decisions Under Pressure• Stress causes decision making to deteriorate• Training under emergency situations is critical

to prepare people for efficient and effective decision making in unanticipated situations

• Emotion can also hinder decisions– Amygdala is active! It is up to your frontal lobe to

calm it down!

Explaining Our Decisions... And dealing with the consequences

• Hindsight bias:– Tendency to view outcomes as inevitable and

predictable after we know the outcome and to believe we could have or did predict what happened

– “Hindsight is 20:20”• Counterfactual thinking (recall: Schwartz)– Imagined alternatives… “If only….”– Attempts to reverse a course of events that led to a

negative experience; explaining atypical or abnormal events, etc to regain sense of control”

– RESIST THE TEMPTATION! It’s natural.

What Happens When We Are Wrong?

• Overconfidence– we are more confident about our thoughts and our experiences

than we should be– Increased by our trust in “intuition”- fast, unreasoned,

automatic feeling. We don’t want to doubt our intuition, because what’s the consequence?

• Belief perseverance– we cling to what we originally believed and have difficulties

accepting opposite truths, even when we are “proven wrong”• Justification (recall: BBC and choice blindness)

– Whether it’s conscious or not, we justify our decisions- think back to choice blindness!

Part 2: Problem-Solving

• How do we solve problems?• How should we solve problems?• Essential steps include:– Interpretation of cause of problem– Strategy to appropriately address the cause with a

relevant solution– Evaluation of the solution

Interpretation of the Problem

• Problem Representation– Step 1: Interpreting or defining the problem

• What is the cause of this issue?• I.E. Gun violence in the U.S.; Education inequality; Chronic fatigue

– Step 2: Verbal vs. Visual• How can I approach this problem? Should I write it down? Draw a

picture? Chart? Graph? Web?• I.E. Identifying correlations between murderers, weapons, SES

background, mental health- VISUALLY

– Gaining expertise consists of your ability to represent and categorize problems so that they can be solved quickly and effectively• i.e. calling football plays, making chess moves, etc… you can

practice!!!

Now for the solving: Strategies

• Trial and error– Works best when there are a limited amount of

choices otherwise it is too time consuming• i.e. trying different keys to open a lock

• Information retrieval– recalling how problems were solved in the past.. Can

help or hinder! (i.e. “Mental Sets”)• i.e. how do other countries solve violence issues?• **problem: could the issue be the result of something

different? Back to problem representation.

Strategies (cont.)

• Algorithms – guarantees a solution but can be tedious

• Heuristics- rules of thumb/ “short-cuts”; no guaranteed solution– Subgoals- break problem into small, more manageable

parts– Hill climbing- moving towards goal (process of elimination)– Means-end analysis- looking at the whole picture; more

flexible than hill-climbing – Working backward- knowing goal and working backwards

from there (i.e. getting somewhere on time)

Obstacles to Problem-Solving

• Motivation to solve a problem a certain way (or lack of emotion all together)

• Emotional Arousal• Mental Set- our tendency to approach a problem in a

certain way but that excludes different approaches to a problem– Need flexibility!!

• Functional Fixedness- assigned meaning to a problem**Abandoning the problem for a while may lead to

insight upon return (i.e. Incubation)

Return to your Worksheet!

• What problem solving devices did you use?• What obstacles did you encounter?• Other real world examples?• How can you use this to make better decisions

in the future?