Thinking and Reasoning: An Introduction to the Psychology of Reason, Judgment and Decision Making

by Manktelow; Ken

• ISBN13: 9781841697406
• ISBN10: 1841697400
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-03-21
• Publisher: Psychology Pres

Summary

This completely rewritten second edition reflects on the revolutionary changes that have occurred in the field since the first edition appeared in 1999, such as the huge expansion in research output, as well as updates of methods and explanations, and the appearance of numerous books on the subject aimed at the popular market. This book reviews an area of psychological research that is not only increasing in popularity in college curricula, but is also making an ever larger impact on the world outside the classroom. The main areas covered are deductive and inductive reasoning, probability judgement, decision making and rationality. In each case, the material is almost entirely new, with topics such as the new paradigm in reasoning research, causal reasoning and counterfactual thinking appearing for the first time. There have also been changes to the structure of the book, with expanded treatments of decision making now spread across two chapters, and a new chapter on personal thinking styles and differences. The book provides a detailed, integrated and approachable treatment of this area of cognitive psychology, and is ideal reading for intermediate and advanced undergraduate students.

Author Biography

Ken Manktelow is Professor of Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He has worked on conditional, especially deontic, reasoning (with his major collaborator David Over), cognitive development and psycholinguistics, and is currently developing research into decision dilemmas and individual differences in reasoning.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Judging and thinking about probability	p. 1
Defining Probability	p. 2
Logical possibility	p. 3
Frequency	p. 4
Propensity	p. 5
Degree of belief	p. 5
Belief revision: Bayes' rule	p. 7
Judging Plain Probabilities	p. 8
Logical possibilities	p. 8
Frequencies	p. 10
Taking samples: where our information comes from	p. 11
Belief Updating	p. 14
Base rates: neglect or respect?	p. 15
Belief revision by natural frequencies	p. 18
Probability from the inside and the outside	p. 25
The planning fallacy	p. 26
Overconfidence	p. 28
The conjunction fallacy	p. 30
Summary	p. 31
The study of reasoning: classic research	p. 33
The Classical Syllogism: Reasoning With Quantities	p. 34
Validity	p. 35
Reasoning With Syllogisms	p. 36
Patterns in Human Performance	p. 38
Explaining the patterns of performance	p. 41
Mental logic	p. 43
Mental models	p. 46
Probability heuristics	p. 51
Summary	p. 56
Reasoning with propositions	p. 57
If: Conditionals	p. 58
Knowing p, knowing q: inferences and truth tables	p. 58
Research results	p. 61
The Wason selection task	p. 63
Reasoning With or: Disjunctives	p. 65
Research results	p. 66
Wason's THOG problem	p. 68
Summary	p. 70
Reasoning and meaning	p. 73
Facilitation: The Study of Content Effects	p. 74
Deontic Reasoning: Thinking About Rules	p. 77
Pragmatic reasoning schemas	p. 78
Evolutionary approaches to deontic reasoning	p. 80
Decision-theoretic approaches	p. 85
Causal Reasoning: Thinking about How the World Works	p. 68
Causal reasoning about general events	p. 89
The covariational approach to causal thinking	p. 90
Prior knowledge and causal models	p. 93
Causal models theory	p. 95
Single Cases and Counterfactual Thinking	p. 98
Summary	p. 102
Explaining reasoning: the classic approaches	p. 103
Mental Logic	p. 104
Braine and O'Brien's theory of If	p. 105
Rips' Psycop theory	p. 107
The Theory of Mental Models	p. 110
Mental models and conditionals	p. 111
The selection task	p. 113
Content and context	p. 114
Illusory inferences	p. 116
Causal and counterfactual reasoning	p. 117
Summary	p. 123
Explaining reasoning: the 'new paradigm'	p. 125
Oaksford and Chater's Bayesian Theory	p. 126
Rational analysis	p. 126
Matching bias	p. 130
The deontic selection task	p. 131
Conditional inference	p. 132
Evans and Over's Suppositional Theory	p. 134
The Dual Process Theory	p. 140
Dual processes in the selection task	p. 141
Belief bias in syllogistic reasoning	p. 142
Heuristic and analytic processes	p. 144
Dual processes and dual systems	p. 146
Dual minds	p. 148
Summary	p. 152
Hypothetical thinking: induction and testing	p. 155
Induction	p. 156
Induction and deduction	p. 156
Category-based induction	p. 158
Extensions and explanations	p. 160
Category-based induction without categories	p. 162
Abduction: finding explanations and causes	p. 165
Induction and deduction revisited	p. 167
Hypothesis Testing	p. 173
Wason's 2 4 6 task and its descendants	p. 174
Confirmation bias	p. 177
Better hypothesis testing	p. 179
Hypothesis testing in the wild	p. 181
Hypothetical Thinking Theory	p. 184
Summary	p. 186
Decision making: preference and prospects	p. 187
Subjective Expected Utility	p. 188
Principles and problems	p. 190
Complex Decisions	p. 196
Preference	p. 199
Different utilities	p. 199
Competing options	p. 202
Framing: the effects of description	p. 205
Prospect Theory: A Descriptive Theory of Decision Making	p. 206
Mental accounting	p. 210
Summary	p. 214
Decisions in context	p. 215
Paradoxes of Choice	p. 216
Too much of a good thing?	p. 216
Decision Dilemmas	p. 221
Personal dilemmas	p. 222
Social dilemmas	p. 225
Deciding Without Thinking	p. 229
Priming	p. 230
Deciding through feeling	p. 232
Fast and frugal decision processes	p. 233
Intuition and expertise	p. 239
Summary	p. 241
Thinking, reasoning and you	p. 243
Rationality	p. 244
Bounded rationality	p. 245
Satisficing	p. 247
Dual rationality	p. 249
Dual rationality and dilemmas	p. 250
Rationality and Personality	p. 254
Individual differences and their implications	p. 254
Dysrationalia	p. 257
Delusional thinking: extreme irrationality	p. 259
Thinking, Reasoning and Culture	p. 263
Western and Eastern thinking	p. 264
The roots of cultural influence	p. 267
Culture and thought and the dual process theory	p. 270
Summary	p. 272
Notes	p. 273
References	p. 275
Author Index	p. 303
Subject Index	p. 311
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