The Psychology of Thinking

Reasoning, Decision-Making and Problem-Solving

John Paul Minda

• Éditeur: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Année: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781529737165
• Édition: 2
• Sujet: Psicología
• Sous-sujet: Psicología cognitiva y cognición

The Psychology of Thinking is an engaging, interesting and easy-to-follow guide into the essential concepts behind our reasoning, decision-making and problem-solving. Clearly structured into 3 sections, this book will;

• Introduce your students to organisation of thought including memory, language and concepts;
• Expand their understanding of reasoning including inference and induction as well as motivation and the impact of mood;
• Improve their thinking in action, focusing on decision-making and problem-solving.

Suitable for any course in which students need to develop their judgement and decision-making skills, this book uses clever examples of real-world situations to help them understand and apply the theories discussed to their everyday thinking.

Section 1 The Organization of Human Thought

1 The Psychology of Thinking

Thinking is so central to the human experience that it has been described as the essence of being. We are all familiar with the phrase, “Je pense donc je suis” or “I think therefore I am”. This comes, of course, from Descartes’ Discourse on Method (1637) and underscores what is so crucial and compelling about the study of thinking. Humans, like other animals, behave, learn, respond, communicate, and remember. But humans also think. We can discover something new by thinking about it. We can solve problems in the mind, visualize solutions, and arrive at an important decision by thinking. We can be aware of our own thoughts and aware of the consequences of our actions and behaviours.

This book is about the psychology of thinking. That might sound redundant, given that psychology is often defined as the study of the mind or of mental activity. In other words, if psychology is not about thinking, what else can it be about? Psychology is a very broad field, encompassing everything from the study of neurotransmitters and basic neuroanatomy to the study of learning and memory to the understanding of mental health and the study of group behaviour. This book is concerned with the study and understanding of the thought process. Thinking is usually studied within the broader field of cognition. Cognitive psychology has traditionally been defined as the study of information processing and behaviour. This encompasses everything from basic attention and perception to memory, concepts, and thinking. As a topic within the study of cognitive psychology, the psychology of thinking is concerned with complex mental behaviours, such as problem-solving, reasoning, decision-making, and becoming an expert. A good understanding of basic cognition is very useful in understanding the psychology of thinking, but it is not necessary. In other words, if you are reading this book as part of a course on thinking, a course on reasoning and decision-making, or even a business or marketing course, and you have already taken a course on cognition, then you may find some helpful overlap in some of the topics covered. But if you have not taken a course on cognition, I do not think you will have any additional difficulty. I have tried to write this text so that it builds on prior knowledge, although that knowledge is not strictly necessary, and you can enjoy and use this book without any prior formal study in cognition.

In this first chapter, I want to describe what thinking is (and also what it is not, for the purposes of this book). I want to consider several examples of thinking, and several challenges to clear thinking. I will also describe some of the ways in which thinking has traditionally been studied.

Objectives

This chapter covers an introduction to the psychology of thinking, some of the history of the field, and the current approaches for the study of thinking. By the end of this chapter, you should be familiar with:

• a definition of the thinking process and how cognition and thinking are related and what kinds of mental activity are considered to be part of the thinking process;
• descriptions of different kinds of thinking;
• challenges to the thinking process, like multitasking or missing information;
• theoretical approaches to the study of thinking, such as Gestalt theory, the cognitive approach, and the Dual Process theory.

What is Thinking?

A basic description

Thinking is mental activity, but it is not just any mental activity. Or rather, thinking and mental activity are not synonymous. For example, basic visual perception, memory consolidation, and coordination of sensory motor activity are all very sophisticated mental activities, but these kinds of behaviours are not usually considered to be thinking. Thinking is a very specific subset of mental activity that involves working with mental representations, planning and executing behaviours, and the coordination of cognitive resources. For example, solving an algebra problem, analyzing the themes in a film, discussing the prospects for your favourite sports team, or making a split-second decision about which route to take when a road is closed are all examples of thinking. Some of these are examples of fast thinking (intuitive judgements) and others are examples of slower thinking (reasoning and analyzing). We'll discuss these two kinds of thinking later in this chapter. Daydreaming, fantasy, depressive thoughts, and anxious ruminations are also examples of thinking, but are less focussed and sometimes less productive. In this book I will deal primarily with thinking as a cognitive phenomenon and spend less time considering the contents of unstructured thought or the clinical ramifications of thoughts that are difficult to control.

Different kinds of thinking

Thinking can be divided up in many ways, including divisions based on content, effort, the desired outcome, underlying cognitive processes, and function. These kinds of divisions are intuitive but also allow researchers to study thinking at different levels. For example, we must make a distinction between the kind of thought that one engages in when solving an introductory physics problem and the kind of thought that one engages in when catching a fly ball in baseball. For readers not immediately familiar with fly balls, this is a ball that is hit with a high arc, which can easily exceed 30 metres (100 feet). Catching one is fairly easy with practice and involves being able to predict exactly where the ball will land, and placing oneself in that location (McBeath et al., 1995). Solving a physics problem and catching a fly ball both require attention. Solving a physics problem and catching a fly ball both have a measurable outcome (passing the exam or catching the ball). And both are essentially physics problems. But solving an introductory physics problem requires sustained attention, the recall and generation of learned facts, the conscious application of those facts, and the ability to engage in some kind of explicit monitoring of the behaviour. This is a conscious and effortful process, even if the solver in question has some experience with physics problems. Catching a fly ball, on the other hand, is a process that often defies verbal description. It is intuitive and does not seem to rely on the recall of facts, but rather on the replay of hand-eye coordination routines. The physics calculations needed to predict where the ball will land are complicated and require information that the person catching the ball will not have, such as the exit velocity when the ball was struck and the launch angle.

Catching a fly ball and solving a basic physics problem are both examples of complex thinking, and yet they differ in terms of what psychological processes are active during the execution. A thorough understanding of the psychology of thinking requires being able to differentiate between these two kinds of thought processes, the cognitive processes that underlie them, and to be able to have an adequate theoretical description of thinking that encompasses both kinds of thinking.

Consider another example: the thinking processes behind a game of chess. Playing chess requires the coordination of several cognitive processes and behaviours. One must have sufficient knowledge of the rules, a good recall for the rules, and be able to apply them. Playing chess, and especially playing chess effectively, also involves recall for common chess positions and recall of previously played games of chess (Chase & Simon, 1973; De Groot, 1965). Playing chess effectively also involves thinking ahead, thinking about what your opponent might do, and developing a strategy for how to react based on what you think the other player will do. This second set of behaviours involves what is known as a theory of mind, which means being able to consider the contents of another person's thoughts.

Playing chess can be contrasted with playing a visually oriented video game. Many games, especially the simple, physics puzzle games found on mobile platforms, such as the “Angry Birds”-type games, place much less emphasis on rule acquisition and retrieval of rules for memory, and place a greater premium on procedurally learned motor responses. As with the previous example (catching fly balls versus solving physics problems), the first behaviour is a conscious and effortful process whereas the second behaviour is an intuitive and procedural process that defies verbal description. Interestingly, both rely on some degree of retrieved memories. In the chapter on expertise in this text, we will discuss at length the degree to which expert chess players rely on the rapid retrieval of previously learned patterns. This may share some overlap with the kind of rapid retrieval of the previously learned motor responses involved in many visually oriented video games. So although these two kinds of thinking are quite different in many ways, and solve different problems, there are shared underlying mechanisms – in this case, the retrieval of prior instances from memory.

We could go one with many other examples, dissecting them to consider what principles of thought and cognition are involved. Writing a paper for a course requires reading and retaining new ideas, considering more than one idea simultaneously, being able to examine the parallels and analogies among ideas, and also being able to make use of basic linguistic process to communicate the idea. Learning to play a short piece on the piano involves the mapping of written notes to motor action, the focus of attention on the sound of the piece, the coordination of several different motor behaviours. Diagnosing patients involves attending to symptoms, comparing the similarity of the observed symptoms to memory representations of previously seen patients. Looking over many of these examples, we start to recognize commonalities: focussing attention, making judgements about similarity, considering several ideas simultaneously. These common attributes will eventually become the objects of study for understanding the psychology of thinking.

Challenges to the Thinking Process

Thinking occurs on many levels and, as described above, different actions require different levels of thought. In fact, most of the time we either arrive at correct decisions or we arrive at decisions for which there was little cost to indirect decision. Furthermore, many researchers argue that humans are quite capable of predicting and judging information even in the face of incomplete and sparse information. For example, a recent study by Tom Griffiths and Joshua Tenenbaum looked at people's ability to make quick judgements about things that they were not experts in, such as how much money a movie might make, a person's lifespan given a quick summary, or how long it takes to bake a cake (Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2006). They found that most people were able to make predictions that fell closely in line with statistical models of optimal outcome. In other words, people often make really good judgements and predictions even if they are not exactly sure about how or why they are doing it. A possible explanation is that people are very efficient at using their existing knowledge, memory, and understanding to fill in gaps and make quick predictions.

But if you have ever arrived at the wrong conclusion, solved a problem incorrectly, or made a bad decision, you've probably realized that thinking can sometimes be a challenge. We make mistakes. Sometimes we have to think about too many things at once, or we do not have all the information we require to arrive at a good decision. The section below considers some of the primary challenges that we face. We will consider many more “thinking challenges” later in this book.

Multitasking

Multitasking is both commonplace and misunderstood. We know that multitasking refers to being able to do more than one thing at a time, like reading and listening to music, talking while cooking, checking Facebook during a lecture, texting and driving, etc. The human brain and mind are designed to be able to divide attention and resources among several input and output channels (Pashler, 1994). What is challenging about understanding multitasking is that most people are aware that it often occurs with some cost to behaviours but at the same time they often assume that it is a necessary action, a positive skill, or both. It would not be uncommon to hear someone claim to be “good at multitasking”. But is it really possible to be good at multitasking?

Current research suggests that there is nearly always a cost, and that this cost may even last beyond the multitasking event. For example, a study by Ophir et al. (2009) created a questionnaire that allowed them to measure light, medium and heavy media multitaskers. In this case, media multitasking refers to using more than one media device or following more than one media stream at the same time. Examples might include studying while watching a show on Netflix, taking notes in class while checking a Twitter feed, or listening to music while reading. These examples are common. They are things that we all probably do from time to time. However, heavy media multitaskers were those who were more than one full standard deviation above the average score on the questionnaire. Participants in the experiment were asked to engage in a number of tasks that required them to switch quickly between responses and detect targets in the presence of distractors. If people were really good at multitasking, they might be expected to do well at a task like this, because good performance relies on the ability to switch quickly and screen out irrelevant information.

This was not the finding, however. Being a heavy media multitasker did not seem to predict a better performance on these cognitive tasks. In fact, the researchers found the opposite pattern – that heavy or “chronic” media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability, likely due to a reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task set. In other words, the very people who were the heaviest multitaskers and who should have been “good at multitasking” were not really very good at all, and they actually performed worse on a test of actual multitasking. One possible explanation for this counterintuitive result is that heavy media multitaskers have adopted an attentional style that results in greater distractibility. In other words, instead of being better at selectively attending and screening out, heavy media multitaskers were worse because they were constantly switching and being distracted. This does not mean that media multitaskers will suffer on all tasks, but it does suggest that multitasking may not always be a benefit.

1.1 Theory in the Real World

One of the most prevalent things in many of our lives is a smartphone. For those of us that use or rely on a smartphone, we know the challenges that it presents and the relative costs and benefits. Without getting into a long list of features and aspects of phones, consider what the smartphone can do to help (or hurt) the thinking process. The positive aspects are pretty clear. People use their phones for communication, texting, as cameras, as clocks, as weather stations, and as a newspaper. As long as the device is connected to a network, users have access to more knowledge than has ever been possible before. One of the most likely negative effects of having a smartphone is multitasking. Our cognitive systems are designed to process multiple channels of information but there is almost always a cost. As you are reading this now, you may have a smartphone. You may have even thought to look at it right now to see if any text message, emails, etc. have arrived.

Consider another dimension to smartphone multitasking. Not only do people find themselves splitting their attention between several things (e.g., taking notes, listening to a lecture, and checking a smartphone), but they may also find themselves spending energy actively ignoring one of those things. That is, the smartphone uses cognitive resources when you are checking it or responding to a text, but it also uses cognitive resources when you try to ignore it. As an example, several years ago, I was in the middle of a lecture and my smartphone buzzed because of an incoming text message. On...