“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots

of ideas.”
Lines Pauling
What is it?
 All mental activities associated with
thinking, knowing, remembering and
communicating

Cognitive psychology studies how the

mind
 Organizes perceptions
 Processes information

 Interprets experience
In order to think about the world, we form……..

What are they?

 Mental groupings of
similar events, ideas and
people
 Good to know that when
one concept is
‘activated’, others
nearby in the network are
primed

These animals all look different, but they

fall under our concept of “dogs”.
Prototype
 Best representative of a concept
 ex: When I say the word sport – did you picture
 Football?
 Basketball?

 Golf?

 Chess?

 NASCAR?
 Trial& error
 Algorithm
 A systematic, step-by-step problem-solving
strategy, guaranteed to provide a solution
 Heuristic
 A rule of thumb (simple thinking strategy) that
allows one to make judgments that are quick but
often in error
 Insight
 A sudden realization of a problem’s solution – this
is not a strategy based solutions to solve problems
efficiently
 That we stole Ms.Vaessen’s debit card and
have decided to empty her bank account
 How do we get past the pin?
 Algorithm
 We will try every possible set of 4 digit numbers
(10 000) but we may get caught before we get
the money
 Heuristic
 You could try birthdays of herself and her
husband…nope…Becca and Pip? Nope again. Oh!
She knows that birthdays are a bad choice
 Insight
 A sudden realization of a problem’s solution –
Ms. Vaessen enjoys Benedict Cumberbatch! We
type in 7437…you’re in!
 Thisis the effortless, immediate, automatic
feeling or thoughts we often use instead of
systematic reasoning
What did they study at school?
 • This heuristic is judging
a situation based on
how similar the aspects
are to the prototypes
the person holds in their
mind.
Kyle Rideout did not go to
Harvard (but he looks like
he did).
•Sonia Dara is a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model – did you
perhaps make certain quick judgments (heuristics) about
her…like about her interests or intelligence?
•She was an economics major at Harvard University while
modelling
 Judging a situation based on examples of
similar situations that initially come to mind.

 Vivid
examples in the news on social media
often cause an availability heuristic.
 Remembering the existence of the
representativeness heuristic and
availability heuristic is important precisely
because we make decisions on effortless,
immediate/automatic feelings or thoughts
(but Tversky and Kahneman point out as so
easily flawed)
 Sowhile heuristics can cut down on time,
they can also lead to errors in thinking

 Representativeness Heuristic
 A tendency to estimate the likelihood of an event
in terms of how typical (how similar to the
prototype) it seems

 Availability Heuristic
 A tendency to estimate the likelihood of an event
in terms of how easily instances of it can be
recalled
 Research repeatedly shows that taking
time to allow our unconscious ‘mental
machinery’ (unconscious processing) to
work on a problem facilitates wise
decision making

 Ourlearned associations can take the

form of ‘gut feelings’

 Intuitionis what we’ve learned but is

implicit (recognition from experience)
 Ourconfidence is not a good
indicator of how right we are.

 BeliefPerseverance-
maintaining a belief even after
it has been proven wrong.

 BeliefBias- People will tend to

accept any and all conclusions
that fit in with their systems of
belief, without challenge or any
deep consideration of what
they are actually agreeing with.
 Participantswere provided a candle,
a box of nails, and several other
objects, and asked to attach the
candle to the wall so that it did not
drip onto the table below.
 Participants tried to nail
the candle directly to the
wall or to glue it to the
wall by melting it. Very
few thought of using the
inside of the nail box as a
candle-holder and nailing
this to the wall.

 • The participants were

“fixated” on the box’s
normal function of holding
nails and could not re-
conceptualize it in a
manner that allowed them
to solve the problem.
Want: A B C
100 21 127 3
5 18 43 10
21 9 42 6
6 14 36 8
• It was: B(127) – A(21) – 2C(6) = 100.

• How was problem 2?

• But what about problems 3 and 4, which required using a new

formula?
• Most people struggled on these, even though the solution (A
– C) is fairly simple.

• Why? Well, it’s because of the creation of a mental set.

This reliance on prior strategies is also seen in mathematical
thinking, where students trying to solve arithmetic problems
over-apply rules that had worked for other familiar types of
problems. Mental sets aren’t all bad – it’s just that we are
often slow to shed our mental sets when we need to.
 Mental set
 The tendency to use a strategy that has worked
in the past
 Functional Fixedness
 A tendency to think of objects only in terms of
their usual functions, a limitation that disrupts
problem solving
 Confirmation Bias
 The inclination to search only for evidence that
will verify one’s beliefs
 a.k.a. rigidity
 The tendency to fall into established thought
patterns.
What occurs once in June, once in July, and
twice in August?
 the letter u
 The inability to see a new use
for an object

 You’ve gone camping and

forgot your hammer and pillow
 How are you going to sleep
comfortably and how will you
secure your tent?
 A tendencyto search for
information that confirms
one’s preconceptions.

For example, if you believe that

during a full moon there is an increase
in admissions to the emergency room
where you work, you will take notice
of admissions during a full moon but
be inattentive to the moon when
admissions occur during other nights
of the month.
 90% of the population  The way a problem
will be saved with this is presented can
medication…..or
drastically effect
 10% of the population
the way we view it.
will die despite this
medication.
 You should not drink
more than two drinks
per day….or
 You should not drink
more than 730 drinks a
year.
 Definition
 The ability to produce original, appropriate, and
valuable ideas and/or solutions to problems

 Creative process
 Research studies indicate that useful and
genuine creativity rarely appears in the form of
sudden flashes
 Creative ideas that come to conscious awareness
have been incubating for some time
 Convergent thinking
 type of mental activity measured by IQ and
achievement tests
 consists of solving precisely defined, logical problems
for which there is a known correct answer
 characterized by greater activity in the left frontal
cortex
 Divergent thinking
 The ability to produce multiple ideas, answers, or
solutions to a problem for which there is no agreed-on
solution
 marked by higher levels of activity in the right frontal
cortex
 Three hobbits and three orcs arrive at a
riverbank, and they all want to cross to the
other side. Fortunately, there is a boat available,
but, unfortunately, it can carry only two
creatures at a time. What really makes the
situation complicated is that the orcs are vicious
creatures.
 Whenever there are more orcs than hobbits on
one side of the river, the orcs will immediately
attack the hobbits and eat them up.
Consequently, you should be certain that you
never leave more orcs than hobbits on either
riverbank. Although the orcs are vicious, they
can be trusted to bring the boat back. Your
challenge is to move all six creatures across the
river without allowing the orcs to eat the
hobbits.
 1) Send two orcs
 (1 orc 3 hobbits remain)
 3) Send 2 orcs
 (0 orcs 3 hobbits remain)
 5) Send 2 hobbits
 (1 orc 1 hobbit remain)
 7) Send 2 hobbits
 (2 orcs 0 hobbits remain)
 9) Send 2 orcs
 (1 orcs 0 hobbits remain)
 11) Send 2 orcs
 (0 orcs 0 hobbits remain)
 2) Send 1 orc back
 (1 orc on right side)
 4) Send 1 orc
 (2 orcs 0 hobbits on right side)
 6) Send 1 hobbit and 1 orc
 (1 orc 1 hobbit on right side)
 8) Send 1 orc
 (0 orcs 3 hobbits on right side)
 10) Send 1 orc
 (1 orcs 3 hobbits remain)