Cognitive Psychology

Paper: V
Code: PSY. 555
Credit: 3
Full Marks: 100 (Theory: 60 + Practical: 40)
Teaching Hours: 48
 Unit 5: Reasoning and Problem Solving
1. Reasoning: Logical, Formal and Natural reasoning
(representativeness, availability, framing decision). How
biases influence decision-making?
2. Problem solving - strategies of problem solving:
operators, heuristic search, means–end analysis, sub goals
strategies, analogy approach, working backward. Newell
and Simon's general problem solver (GPS)
 Introduction
• Thinking covers a range of different mental activities, such as reflecting on
ideas, having new ideas, theorizing, arguing, making decisions and solving
problems.
• An important feature common to all of these particular activities is that they
are under our own control and we can run through actions symbolically in
our minds.
• Also common to most of these activities is that our thinking is directed
towards specific goals.
• However, other types of thinking do not have these characteristics; when
imagining or daydreaming there is often a feeling of an uncontrolled drifting
of our thoughts.
 Introduction
• Psychologists define thinking in their own ways.
• Some psychologists define thinking as sub vocal talking.
• Some define it as problem solving behavior.
• Some define it as information processing process.
• For some psychologists, thinking is the mental manipulation of information.
• Morgan et.al (1986) defines thinking as the form of information processing
that goes on during the period between a stimulus event and the response
to it.
• Thus, thinking is usually initiated by a problem and includes all mental
activities that go in our mind during problem solving.
• Thinking is a very complex covert mental process. It is often used
interchangeably to the word cognition.
• Reasoning is sometimes used synonymously with thinking to refer to
logical sequence of thoughts.
• Reasoning is drawing conclusions from the information available to us in
order to reach specific conclusions.
• In the process of reasoning, the individual reason from the past
experiences to solve problems.
• Reasoning involves imagination, concepts, percepts and languages.
• Reasoning is broadly defined as the process of drawing conclusions to
inform how people solve problems and make decisions.
• Reasoning is the capacity of consciously making sense of things,
establishing and verifying facts, applying logic, and changing or justifying
practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information.
• Reasoning is associated with thinking, cognition, and intellect.
• Reasoning is the capacity of consciously making sense of things,
establishing and verifying facts, applying logic, and changing or
justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or
existing information.
• Reasoning is associated with thinking, cognition, and intellect.
• Our thinking capacity is based largely on our ability to manipulate
mental representations—the ingredients of thought.
• Our information-processing system combines, transforms, and
elaborates mental representations in ways that allow us to engage in
reasoning, problem solving, and decision making.
• Reasoning is the process through which we generate and evaluate
arguments, as well as reach conclusions about them.
• Reasoning is what we do when we take information that we are given,
compare it to what we already know, and then come up with a
conclusion.
• While much of our ability to reason is innate, these skills can be taught
and improved upon.
• Reasoning skills often happen subconsciously and within seconds.
However, sometimes we need to think things through to reach a
conclusion when we are presented with a tough question or situation.
• Reasoning skills are essential to day-to-day life: we use them to make
choices among possible options, to distinguish between positive and
negative situations, to decide how to approach a problem and resolve
it, and much more.
 Reasoning
• Reasoning refers to the mental process of drawing conclusions or making
inferences based on available information, evidence, or experiences. It
involves using logical and cognitive skills to analyze, evaluate, and form
judgments about a given situation or problem.
• Reasoning plays a crucial role in various aspects of human thinking,
problem-solving, and decision-making.
• Reasoning is known as the particular sequence of ideas used to arrive at
a conclusion.
• Reasoning is the process of drawing conclusions from principles and
from evidences.
• In reasoning, we move from what is already known to infer a new
conclusion or to evaluate a proposed conclusion.
• We reason in different ways.
 Reasoning
• Types of reasoning:
• Formal Reasoning (Logical Reasoning)
• Informal Reasoning
• Natural Reasoning
 Formal Reasoning (Logical Reasoning)
• Astronomers tell us that the temperature at the core of the sun is about 27 million
degrees Fahrenheit. How do they know this? They can’t put a temperature probe
inside the sun, so their estimate is based on inferences from other things that they
know about the sun and about physical objects in general.
• For example, telescopic observations allowed astronomers to calculate the energy
coming from one small part of the sun. They then used what geometry told them
about the surface area of spheres to estimate the sun’s total energy output. Further
calculations told them how hot a body would have to be to generate that much
energy.
• In other words, astronomers’ estimates of the sun’s core temperature are based on
formal reasoning (also called logical reasoning)—the process of following a set of
rigorous steps for reaching valid, or correct, conclusions. Some of these steps
included the application of specific mathematical formulas to existing data in order
to generate new data. Such formulas are examples of algorithms—systematic
methods that always reach a correct solution to a problem, if a correct solution
exists.
• The astronomers also followed the rules of logic, a set of statements that provide a
formula for drawing valid conclusions about the world.
 Rules of Logic
• Logical means that individuals are capable of giving plausible reasons for
events or capable of making inferences implied by other facts.
• Mill (1874) viewed the laws of logic as synonymous with the laws of
thought.
• According to Mill, logical principles were not really discovered and
developed. He understood logical principles as simply a formal account of
the same principles used by people in their everyday thinking and
reasoning.
• Mill was aware that people sometimes made logical errors, but explained
these as simply nonsystematic slips.
 Human Thought and the Rules of Logic
• James (1890) maintained that the two principal components in logical
reasoning were analysis and abstraction.
• Analysis was our ability to break down an object into its components, letting
one of the parts represent the entire object. For e.g, Freud is a man. Freud’s
component is his maleness.
• Abstraction was our ability to designate a specific component as a part of a
broader classification. For e.g, all men are mortal, it follows that Freud must
be mortal. Thus, Freud can be represented by his maleness, which can be
grouped into broader classification of being mortal.
• According to James, these two mental processes enable logical reasoning to
occur.
 Validity, Truth and Soundness
• Logical analysis can take many forms such as validity, truth and soundness.
• A logical argument is valid if it is according to the rules of established by
logicians and the conclusion of the argument necessarily follows from the
earlier statements.
• Sometimes, validity is used as synonymous with truth but that’s a mistake.
• A logical argument can be valid but untrue. For e.g,
• All dinosaurs are animals
• All animals are in zoos
• Therefore, all dinosaurs are in zoos.
• The conclusion is valid according to the rules of logic, however the
conclusion is not true.
• However, if the argument is true, and the reasoning is valid, then the
conclusions will also be true.
 Validity, Truth and Soundness
• All logical systems have the property of soundness, which simply means that
given the truth of the argument, valid reasoning will produce a truthful
conclusion.
• Soundness in reasoning doesn’t necessarily imply that logical reasoning has
taken place.
• If we are given true statements, we may be able to determine a valid, true
conclusions. Under these circumstances, our reasoning would be sound.
• Logical reasoning implies that we have followed the rules of logical
inferences.
• Logical reasoning is defined as much by its methods as by its outcome. If we
deviate from this method, our reasoning is not logical, no matter what other
properties it may have.
 Formal Reasoning (Logical Reasoning)
• Formal Reasoning is a set of rigorous procedures for reaching valid
conclusions.
• Algorithms : Systematic procedures that cannot fail to produce a correct
solution to a problem.
• Rules of logic : A set of statements that provide a formula for drawing valid
conclusions.
• Formal/Logical Reasoning is divided into three types:
• Deductive Reasoning
• Inductive Reasoning
• Abductive Reasoning
 Deductive Reasoning
• In general terms, deductive reasoning means using a given set of facts or data to
deduce other facts from by reasoning logically.
• Deductive reasoning can be used to proof that these new facts are true.
• For instance the classic example:
Major premise: All humans are mortal
Minor premise: Socrates is human
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal
• Applying the deduction method on the general rule “all humans are mortal” (major
premise) in the specific situation “Socrates is human” (minor premise), the
conclusion can be drawn that “Socrates is mortal”.
• Deductive reasoning provides no new information, it only rearranges information
that is already known into a new statements or truths. So deductive reasoning is “if
this is true, than this is also true”. Deductive reasoning tests typically contain
syllogisms as questions.
 Deductive Reasoning
• Deductive reasoning is the process of reasoning from one or more general
statements regarding what is known to reach a logically certain conclusions.
• It often involves reasoning from one or more general statements regarding
what is known to a specific application of the general statement.
• Syllogistic reasoning is a formal reasoning in which people draw a conclusion
from a set of assumptions.
• It is one of the common type of deductive reasoning.
 Inductive Reasoning
• Inductive reasoning is looking for a pattern or a trend and then generalizing it.
• When you generalize and extrapolate the information, you don’t know for
sure if this trend will continue, but you assume it will.
• You therefore don’t know for sure that a conclusion based on inductive
reasoning will be 100% true.
• The most common form of inductive reasoning tests consist of non-verbal
figure sequences. They follow the same methodology, find the pattern, and
extrapolate to find the next figure etc.
 Inductive Reasoning
• Inductive reasoning is the opposite of deductive reasoning. Inductive
reasoning makes broad generalizations from specific observations. Basically,
there is data, then conclusions are drawn from the data. This is called
inductive logic.
• "We make many observations, determine a pattern, make a generalization,
and infer an explanation or a theory."
• An example of inductive logic is, "The coin I pulled from the bag is a penny.
That coin is a penny. A third coin from the bag is a penny. Therefore, all the
coins in the bag are pennies."
• Even if all of the premises are true in a statement, inductive reasoning allows
for the conclusion to be false. Here's an example: "Harold is a grandfather.
Harold is bald. Therefore, all grandfathers are bald." The conclusion does not
follow logically from the statements.
 Inductive Reasoning
• Inductive reasoning is the process of reasoning from specific facts or
observations to reach a likely conclusion that may explain the facts.
• The inductive reasoner may use the probable conclusions to attempt to
predict future specific instances.
• Example:
• Premise 1: Ram is a student of psychology.
• Premise 2: Ram is intelligent.
• Conclusion: Psychology students are intelligent.
 Abductive Reasoning
• Abductive reasoning is the third form of logical reasoning and is somewhat similar to
inductive reasoning.
• Abductive reasoning is a form of inference that involves forming the best possible
explanation or hypothesis for a given set of observations or evidence. It focuses on
generating plausible explanations rather than definitive conclusions. Abductive reasoning
is often used in scientific investigations and diagnostic reasoning, where incomplete or
ambiguous information is available.
• It was first introduced by the term “guessing”, since conclusions drawn here are based on
probabilities. In abductive reasoning it is presumed that the most plausible conclusion is
also the correct one. Example:
Major premise: The jar is filled with yellow marbles
Minor premise: Bob has a yellow marble in his hand
Conclusion: The yellow marble in Bob’s hand was taken out of the jar
• By abductive reasoning, the possibility that Bob took the yellow marble from the jar is
reasonable, however it is purely based on assumption.
• The yellow marble could have been given to Bob by anyone, or Bob could have bought a
yellow marble at a store. Therefore, abducing that Bob took the yellow marble, from the
observation of “the yellow marble filled jar” can lead to a false conclusion.
 Informal Reasoning
• Informal reasoning, also known as everyday or ordinary reasoning, refers to
the process of drawing conclusions or making judgments based on personal
experiences, common sense, and practical knowledge rather than formal logic
or structured arguments.
• It is the type of reasoning that individuals use in their daily lives to navigate
various situations, solve problems, and make decisions.
• Unlike formal reasoning, which follows specific rules and structures, informal
reasoning is more flexible and context-dependent.
• It takes into account factors such as emotions, personal beliefs, social norms,
and cultural influences.
• Informal reasoning is often subjective and may vary from person to person.
 Informal Reasoning
• Informal reasoning :The process of evaluating a conclusion based on the
evidence available to support it.
• Informal reasoning, comes into play when we are trying to assess the
believability of a conclusion based on the evidence available to support it.
• Informal reasoning is also known as inductive reasoning, because its goal is to
induce a general conclusion to appear on the basis of specific facts or
examples.
• A more practical approach is to base your conclusion on the number of
observations that some mental rule of thumb leads you to believe is
“enough.” In other words, you would take a mental “shortcut” to reach a
conclusion that is probably, but not necessarily, correct.
• Such mental shortcuts are called heuristics.
 Informal Reasoning
• Heuristics can be helpful, but they can also bias our thinking and cause errors.
• Suppose your rule of thumb is to vote for all the candidates in a particular
political party instead of researching the views of each individual. You might
end up voting for someone with whom you strongly disagree on some issues.
• There are three potentially problematic heuristics that often affect people’s
judgments. These are
• the anchoring heuristic,
• the representativeness heuristic, and
• the availability heuristic.
 Informal Reasoning
• Anchoring heuristic : A shortcut in the thought process that occurs when individuals rely
heavily on an initial piece of information to make judgments or estimates.
• During price negotiations, the initial price offered serves as an anchor that influences the
subsequent bargaining process. For example, when selling a used car, setting a higher initial
asking price may lead potential buyers to anchor their offers closer to that higher price, even if
it is significantly higher than the car's actual value.
• Representativeness heuristic : A mental shortcut that involves judging whether something
belongs in a given class on the basis of its similarity to other members of that class.
• When a doctor encounters a patient with certain symptoms, they may rely on the
representativeness heuristic to make a diagnosis. If the symptoms match a known medical
condition or resemble a typical case, the doctor might conclude that the patient has that
specific condition, even without conducting further tests or considering less common
possibilities.
• Availability heuristic : A mental shortcut through which judgments are based on information
that is most easily brought to mind.
• For example, if someone has experienced a car accident, they may overestimate the risk of car
accidents compared to other forms of transportation. The availability of their own experience
influences their perception of risk.
 Conditional Reasoning
• One formal reasoning task that has been extensively studied by cognitive
psychologists is conditional reasoning.
• It takes place when an individual is given statements called conditions - a rule
for determining what outcomes can be expected if specified conditions are
present.
• If you have studied hard, you will do well in the exam.
• You have studied hard.
• You can expect to do well in the exam.

• If it snows on Thursday, I will go skiing.

• I did not go skiing.
• It did not snow on Thursday.

• If she likes me, she will go out with me.

• She likes me not.
• She won’t go out with me.
 Natural Reasoning
• Naturalistic reasoning refers to the process of making judgments and
decisions based on natural or ecological cues, often observed in real-
world settings.
• It involves drawing inferences and conclusions based on practical
knowledge, observations, and experiences rather than relying solely on
formal logic or abstract reasoning.
• In naturalistic reasoning, individuals use their understanding of the
environment, context, and patterns to make judgments and predictions.
• It can involve a combination of intuition, pattern recognition, and the
application of heuristics or mental shortcuts to navigate complex
situations.
• Naturalistic reasoning often relies on the integration of multiple sources
of information, including sensory perception, prior knowledge, and social
cues.
 Natural Reasoning
• Natural reasoning and informal reasoning are not the same, although they
share some similarities.
• Natural reasoning refers to the process of making judgments and decisions
based on practical knowledge, observations, and experiences in real-world
settings. It involves drawing inferences and conclusions using natural cues
and ecological contexts. Natural reasoning relies on patterns, intuition, and
the integration of multiple sources of information, including sensory
perception and prior knowledge.
• Informal reasoning, on the other hand, refers to the process of thinking and
making judgments outside of formal logic or strict deductive reasoning. It
involves drawing conclusions, solving problems, and making decisions using
heuristics, personal experiences, and contextual information.
 Natural Reasoning
• While natural reasoning is specific to practical knowledge and real-world settings,
informal reasoning is a broader term that encompasses various forms of
reasoning that are not strictly formal or deductive.
• Natural reasoning can be seen as a subset of informal reasoning, focusing
specifically on reasoning processes that rely on ecological cues and patterns
observed in natural environments.
• When driving a car, individuals use naturalistic reasoning to assess the traffic flow,
anticipate the behavior of other drivers, and make decisions such as when to
change lanes or merge. They rely on their experience, visual cues, and
understanding of the driving environment to navigate safely.
• In medical settings, naturalistic reasoning plays a role in the diagnostic process.
Doctors observe patients' symptoms, gather information about their medical
history, and use pattern recognition to identify potential causes of the symptoms.
They draw on their expertise and previous experiences to form hypotheses and
guide further investigations.
 Natural Reasoning
• Most people do not know about logical inference rules and so they
can’t possibly apply them.
• Hence, people are given problems that are similar to the ones they are
likely to encounter in real life. The problem involves making estimates
about events that could take place in the real world.
• Thus, we try to find out whether people can reason their way to a true
conclusions, given premises that could be true.
• In this sense, the emphasis in natural reasoning is on conditions that
fosters soundness in human reasoning.
• It includes:
• Inferences about causality
• Representativeness
• Availability
• Framing Decisions
 Natural Reasoning
• Our cognitive system have the ability to make inferences about cause
and effect that are reliable.
• Causal inference is the process of drawing a conclusion about
a causal connection based on the conditions of the occurrence of an
effect.
• Causal inference is an example of causal reasoning.
• Causal reasoning is the process of identifying causality: the relationship
between a cause and its effect.
• Causal relationships may be understood as a transfer of force.
• If A causes B, then A must transmit a force (or causal power) to B which
results in the effect. Causal relationships suggest change over time;
cause and effect are temporally related, and the cause precedes the
outcome.
 Representativeness
• The representativeness heuristic is used when making judgments about the probability of
an event under uncertainty.
• It is one of a group of heuristics (simple rules governing judgment or decision-making)
proposed by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the early 1970s.
• Heuristics are described as "judgmental shortcuts that generally get us where we need to
go – and quickly – but at the cost of occasionally sending us off course." Heuristics are
useful because they use effort-reduction and simplification in decision-making.
• Tversky and Kahneman defined representativeness as "the degree to which [an event] (i)
is similar in essential characteristics to its parent population, and (ii) reflects the salient
features of the process by which it is generated".
• When people rely on representativeness to make judgments, they are likely to judge
wrongly because the fact that something is more representative does not actually make it
more likely.
• The representativeness heuristic is simply described as assessing similarity of objects and
organizing them based around the category prototype. The problem is that people
overestimate its ability to accurately predict the likelihood of an event. Thus, it can result
in neglect of relevant base rates and other cognitive biases.
 Representativeness
• When making decisions or judgments, we often use mental shortcuts or
"rules of thumb" known as heuristics. For every decision, we don't always
have the time or resources to compare all the information before we make a
choice, so we use heuristics to help us reach decisions quickly and
efficiently.
• Sometimes these mental shortcuts can be helpful, but in other cases, they
can lead to errors or cognitive biases.
• The representativeness heuristic is one heuristic that we use when making
judgments.
• In this particular example, we estimate the likelihood of an event by
comparing it to an existing prototype that already exists in our minds. Our
prototype is what we think is the most relevant or typical example of a
particular event or object.
 Representativeness
• When using the representativeness heuristic you decide whether
an example belongs to a certain class or a group on the basis of
how similar it is to other items in that class of group.
• How well does information match our representation of concept?
• Stereotype, generalized beliefs
• Examples of this cognitive bias can be found in everyday life.
• When we meet someone and don’t know anything about them
and if we are asked the probability of their profession, we will use
their look or description to predict the probability of their
profession.
• Consider Laura Smith. She is 31, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored
in economics at university and, as a student, she was passionate about the
issues of equality and discrimination.
• Is it more likely that Laura works at a bank? Or, is it more likely that she works
at a bank AND is active in the feminist movement?
• Many people when asked this question go for option 2, that Laura works in a
bank but is also active in the feminist movement. But that is incorrect. In fact,
in giving that answer, they’ve actually been influenced by representativeness
heuristic bias.
 Availability
• Availability is a heuristic whereby people make judgments about the
likelihood of an event based on how easily an example, instance, or case
comes to mind.
• Tversky and Kahneman’s (1973) availability heuristic argues that people
sometimes judge the frequency of events in the world by the ease with
which examples come to mind. When forced to make a decision, we rely on
what is brought to mind quickly, which is a useful mental shortcut. However,
this undermines our ability to accurately judge frequency and magnitude.
• We make decisions based on what we remember. We assume our memories
are a representative sample of reality, and discount events that are outside
of our immediate recollection.
• Using the availability heuristic, people would judge the probability of events
by the ease in which instances could be brought to mind. Thus, using
the availability heuristic, people would judge an event to be more likely to
occur if they could think of more examples of that event.
• A commonly cited example of the availability heuristic is Kahneman & Tversky’s
experiment that asked people to recall words that begin with the letter K versus those
that have K as their third letter. Because we can much more easily recall words such as
kitchen, kangaroo and kale, we ignore the fact that there are actually about twice as many
words with K in third place (e.g. ask).
• Karlsson, Loewenstein, and Ariely (2008) showed that people are more likely to purchase
insurance to protect themselves after a natural disaster they have just experienced than
they are to purchase insurance on this type of disaster before it happens.
• After seeing news reports about people losing their jobs, you might start to believe that
you are in danger of being laid-off. You start lying awake in bed each night worrying that
you are about to be fired.
• After seeing several television programs on shark attacks, you start to think that such
incidences are relatively common. When you go on vacation, you refuse to swim in the
ocean because you believe the probability of a shark attack is high.
• After reading an article about lottery winners, you start to overestimate your own
likelihood of winning the jackpot. You start spending more money than you should each
week on lottery tickets.
• After seeing news stories about high-profile child abductions, you begin to believe that
such tragedies are quite common. You refuse to let your child play outside by herself and
never let her leave your sight.
 Framing Decisions
• Framing is a cognitive heuristic in which people tend to reach conclusions
based on the 'framework' within which a situation was presented.
• The framing effect is a cognitive bias where people decide on options based
on if the options are presented with positive or negative semantics; e.g. as a
loss or as a gain.
• People tend to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented but seek risks
when a negative frame is presented. Gain and loss are defined in the
scenario as descriptions of outcomes (e.g., lives lost or saved, disease
patients treated and not treated, etc.).
• Framing effect is a cognitive bias in which the brain makes decisions about
information depending upon how the information is presented. Framing
effect is often used in marketing to influence decision-makers and
purchases. It takes advantage of the tendency for people to view the same
information but respond to it in different ways, depending on whether a
specific option is presented in a positive frame or in a negative frame.
• Tversky and Kahneman asked participants in their study to decide between two
treatments for 600 people who contracted a fatal disease. Treatment A would result in
400 deaths, and treatment B had a 33% chance that no one would die but a 66% chance
that everyone would die. This was done with either positive framing (how many people
would live) or negative framing (how many people would die). Treatment A received the
most support (72%) when framed as saving 200 lives, but dropped significantly (to 22%)
when framed as losing 400 lives.
Framing Treatment A Treatment B
"A 33% chance of saving all 600 people,
Positive "Saves 200 lives"
66% possibility of saving no one."
"400 people will "A 33% chance that no people will die,
Negative
die" 66% probability that all 600 will die."

Treatment A was chosen by 72% of participants when it was presented with

positive framing ("saves 200 lives") dropping to 22% when the same choice was
presented with negative framing ("400 people will die").
• Almost 100% of students registered early when a penalty fee frame was
presented for not doing so, compared with just over 65% when it was framed
as a discount (Gächter et al., 2009)
• Let's say we've a new product "Fat Free Yogurt“ Which do you think would be
the healthier yogurt? 99% fat free of 1% fat. If you take a moment to think
about it, both these statements say the same thing. Both yogurts contain 1%
fat, and so both are therefore are 99% fat-free. However; when asked which
yogurt seems like the healthier option; people are much more likely to show
a clear preference for the “99% Fat-Free” option.
• In advertising, visuals and words are manipulated to give a positive effect.
• Positive Frame: The product has been proven effective in 80% cases.
• Negative Frame: The product has failed to work on 2 out of every 10 cases.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
• Decision making is inherently a cognitive activity, the result of thinking that may be
either rational or irrational (i.e., based on assumptions not supported by evidence).
• Individual characteristics including personality and experience influence how
people make decisions. As such, an individual’s predispositions can either be an
obstacle or an enabler to the decision-making process.
• From the psychological perspective, decisions are often weighed against a set of
needs and augmented by individual preferences.
• Abraham Maslow’s work on the needs-based hierarchy is one of the best known
and most influential theories on the topic of motivation—according to his theory,
an individual’s most basic needs (e.g., physiological needs such as food and water; a
sense of safety) must be met before an individual will strongly desire or be
motivated by higher-level needs (e.g., love; self-actualization.
• The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a widely used diagnostic for identifying
personality characteristics. By categorizing individuals in terms of four
dichotomies—thinking and feeling, extroversion and introversion, judging and
perception, and sensing and intuition—the MBTI provides a map of the individual’s
orientation toward decision making.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
• A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that affects the decisions and
judgments that people make.
• Some of these biases are related to memory. The way you remember an
event may be biased for a number of reasons and that in turn can lead to
biased thinking and decision-making.
• Other cognitive biases might be related to problems with attention. Since
attention is a limited resource, people have to be selective about what they
pay attention to in the world around them. Because of this, subtle biases can
creep in and influence the way you see and think about the world.
• A cognitive bias is a type of error in thinking that occurs when people are
processing and interpreting information in the world around them. The
human brain is powerful but subject to limitations. Cognitive biases are often
a result of your brain's attempt to simplify information processing. They are
rules of thumb that help you make sense of the world and reach decisions.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
• Biases in how we think can be major obstacles in any decision-making
process.
• Biases distort and disrupt objective contemplation of an issue by introducing
influences into the decision-making process that are separate from the
decision itself. We are usually unaware of the biases that can affect our
judgment.
• The most common cognitive biases are confirmation, anchoring, halo effect,
overconfidence bias, availability heuristic, self serving bias, attentional bias.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
Confirmation Bias:
• A confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias that involves favoring
information that confirms your previously existing beliefs or biases.
• This is favoring information that conforms to your existing beliefs and
discounting evidence that does not conform.
• This bias occurs when decision makers seek out evidence that confirms their
previously held beliefs, while discounting or diminishing the impact of
evidence in support of differing conclusions.
• For example, imagine that a person holds a belief that left-handed people are
more creative than right-handed people. Whenever this person encounters a
person that is both left-handed and creative, they place greater importance
on this "evidence" that supports what they already believe. This individual
might even seek proof that further backs up this belief while discounting
examples that don't support the idea.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
Anchoring Bias
• When people are trying to make a decision, they often use an anchor or focal
point as a reference or starting point.
• Psychologists have found that people have a tendency to rely too heavily on
the very first piece of information they learn, which can have a serious impact
on the decision they end up making.
• In psychology, this type of cognitive bias is known as the anchoring bias or
anchoring effect.
• This is the overreliance on an initial single piece of information or experience
to make subsequent judgments. Once an anchor is set, other judgments are
made by adjusting away from that anchor, which can limit one’s ability to
accurately interpret new, potentially relevant information.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
Anchoring Bias
• For example, imagine that you are buying a new car. You read online that the
average price of the vehicle you are interested in is NRs. 25,00,000. When you
are shopping at the local car lot, the dealer offers you the same vehicle for
NRs. 24,50,000, which you quickly accept—after all, it's 50,000 less than what
you were expecting to pay. So you buy the car.
• However, the car dealer across town is offering the exact same vehicle for just
24,00,000, a full 50,000 less than what you paid and 1,00,000 less than the
average price you found online.
• Afterward, you might berate yourself for making such a quick decision and
not shopping around for a better deal. So why did you jump so quickly on that
first offer?
• The anchoring bias suggests that we favor the first bit of information we
learn.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
Halo Effect:
• Your overall impression of a person influences how you feel and think about
his or her character. This especially applies to physical attractiveness
influencing how you rate their other qualities.
• The halo effect is a type of cognitive bias in which our overall impression of a
person influences how we feel and think about their character. Essentially,
your overall impression of a person ("He is nice!") impacts your evaluations of
that person's specific traits ("He is also smart!"). Perceptions of a single trait
can carry over to how people perceive other aspects of that person.
• One great example of the halo effect in action is our overall impression of
celebrities. Since people perceive them as attractive, successful, and often
likable, they also tend to see them as intelligent, kind, and funny.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
Halo Effect:
• The halo effect is also something referred to as the "physical attractiveness
stereotype" and the "what is beautiful is also good" principle.
• Physical appearance is often a major part of the halo effect. People who are
considered attractive tend to be rated higher on other positive traits as well.
• Researchers have found that students tend to rate good-looking teachers as
smarter, kinder, and more funnier than less attractive instructors. This
tendency for our initial impression of a person to influence what we think of
them overall is known as the halo effect.
• This cognitive bias can have a powerful impact in the real world. For example,
job applicants perceived as attractive and likable are also more liable to be
viewed as competent, smart, and qualified for the job.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
Overconfidence Bias
• This bias occurs when a person overestimates the reliability of their
judgments. This can include the certainty one feels in her own ability,
performance, level of control, or chance of success.
• Overconfidence bias is a tendency to hold a false and misleading assessment
of our skills, intellect, or talent. In short, it’s an egotistical belief that we’re
better than we actually are.
• Overconfidence bias is the tendency to overestimate our talents and abilities.
We consider ourselves better than we really are.
• Due to the simplicity of the phenomenon, most people do not believe that
they consider themselves as overconfident. The truth turns out to be the
opposite.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
Availability Heuristic
• This is placing greater value on information that comes to your mind quickly. You
give greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability
and likelihood of similar things happening in the future.
• When you are trying to make a decision, a number of related events or situations
might immediately spring to the forefront of your thoughts. As a result, you might
judge that those events are more frequent or probable than others. You give
greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability and
likelihood of similar things happening in the future.
• our brains rely on a number of different strategies to make quick decisions. This
illustrates what is known as the availability heuristic, a mental shortcut that helps
you make fast, but sometimes incorrect, assessments.
• For example, after seeing several news reports about car thefts, you might make a
judgment that vehicle theft is much more common than it really is in your area. This
type of availability heuristic can be helpful and important in decision-making. When
faced with a choice, we often lack the time or resources to investigate in greater
depth.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
Self-Serving Bias
• This is the tendency to blame external forces when bad things happen and
give yourself credit when good things happen.
• Self-serving bias is how social psychologists describe humans’ tendency to
blame external forces when bad things happen and to give ourselves credit
when good things happen. Although it can mean evading personal
responsibility for your actions, self-serving bias is a defense mechanism that
protects your self-esteem.
• Let’s say you pass an exam. The self-serving bias would lead you to believe
that it's because you studied hard. If you failed, on the other hand, you might
believe it was because the teacher didn't explain the subject correctly, the
classroom was too warm, or your roommate kept you up all night before the
exam.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
Attentional Bias
• This is the tendency to pay attention to some things while simultaneously
ignoring others.
• This impacts not only the things that we perceive in the environment but the
decisions that we make based upon our perceptions.
• Our attention becomes focused on just a few of the options while we ignore
the rest. This tendency represents a type of cognitive bias known as an
attentional bias.
• When making a decision on which car to buy, you may pay attention to the
look and feel of the exterior and interior, but ignore the safety record and gas
mileage.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
• Actor-Observer Bias: This is the tendency to attribute your own actions to external
causes while attributing other people's behaviors to internal causes. You attribute
your high cholesterol level to genetics while you consider others to have a high level
due to poor diet and lack of exercise.
• Functional Fixedness: This is the tendency to see objects as only working in a
particular way. If you don't have a hammer, you never consider that a big wrench
can also be used to drive a nail into the wall.
• Misinformation Effect: This is the tendency for post-event information to interfere
with the memory of the original event. It is easy to have your memory influenced by
what you hear about the event from others. Knowledge of this effect has led to a
mistrust of eyewitness information.
• False Consensus Effect: This is the tendency to overestimate how much other
people agree with you.
• Optimism Bias: This bias leads you to believe that you are less likely to suffer from
misfortune and more likely to attain success than your peers.
 How Biases Influence Decision Making
• Negativity Bias: Our tendency to show greater sensitivity to
negative information.
• Planning Fallacy: Belief that one can accomplish more in a given
task within a period of time than one actually can.
• Attribution errors/Biases: The errors in understanding the causes
and drawing inferences. It leads to false inferences and affects our
judgment.
• Fundamental attribution error: The cause of another person’s behavior is
internal rather than situational.
 Problem
• A problem is a situation in which a person is trying to reach some goal and must find a
means for arriving at it.
• A problem is any conflict or difference between one situation and another situation we
wish to produce our goal.
• The term problem solving refers to the mental process that people go through to
discover, analyze and solve problems.
• Problem solving can also be defined as the effort to develop or choose among various
responses in order to attain a desired goal.
• All problem solving necessarily begins with the recognition that a problem exists.
• All problems are solved through thinking.
• The solver must perceive a discrepancy between the current state of affairs and some
desired state of affairs.
• The desired state becomes the goal and the solver undertakes mental operations with
the intentions of achieving the goal.
• Problem solving then consists of recognizing a problem and doing mental work to
achieve a goal.
Stages in Problem Solving
• Baron (2000) identified 4 stages of problem
solving:
• Problem Identification and Understanding
• Generation of potential solutions
• Examination and evaluation of solutions
• Trying out solutions and evaluation of results
 Problem Solving
• Preparation: Recognized a problem exists and some preliminary
attempts have been made to understand and solve the problem
• Incubation: The initial attempt fails and the solver turns away from
the problem or puts the problem aside for a while. No conscious
working on the problem but only unconsciously.
• Illumination: The solution appears suddenly from nowhere (insight).
The unconscious work ends and brings the answer to the surface of
consciousness.
• Evaluation: The apparent solution is tested to see if it satisfactorily
solves the problem.
• Verification: The solution is verified and confirmed. The solution
becomes a workable solution.
 Types of Problems
• Problems can be categorized according to whether they have
clear paths to a solution ( Davidson & Sternberg, 2003 ) .
• Well-structured problems have clear paths to solutions. These
problems also are termed well-defined problems .
• Ill-structured problems lack clear paths to solutions. These
problems are also termed ill-defined problems .
Methods/Strategies of Problem Solving
• Trial and Error
• Algorithm
• Heuristics
• Analogy
• Insight
Methods/Strategies of Problem Solving
• Operators
• Heuristics search
• Mean end analysis
• Sub goal strategies
• Analogy
• Working backward
 Operators
• Means of transforming on state into another state.
• A strategy in problem-solving research to refer to a particular action that
will transform the problem state into another problem state.
• In 1972, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon published the book Human
Problem Solving, in which they outlined their problem space theory of
problem solving. In this theory, people solve problems by searching in
a problem space. The problem space consists of the initial (current) state,
the goal state, and all possible states in between. The actions that people
take in order to move from one state to another are known as operators.
• e.g., Tower of Hanoi
 Operators
• Operator application – the solution to the overall problem is a sequence of
known operators (actions to change the situation).
• Problem space – the various states of the problem.
• State – a representation of the problem in some degree of solution.
• Initial state – the initial (starting) situation.
• Goal state – the desired ending situation.
• Intermediate states – states on the way to the goal.
• Operator – an action that will transform the current problem state into another
problem state.
• The problem space is a maze of states.
• Operators provide paths through the maze – ways of moving through states.
• Problem solving is a search for the appropriate path through the maze.
• Search trees – describe possible paths.
Operators
 Heuristics Search
• Heuristic search refers to a search strategy that attempts to optimize a problem
by iteratively improving the solution based on a given heuristic function.
• A heuristic search method does not always guarantee to find an optimal or the
best solution, but may instead find a good or acceptable solution within a
reasonable amount of time and memory space.
• A Heuristic is a technique to solve a problem faster than classic methods, or to
find an approximate solution when classic methods cannot.
• This is a kind of a shortcut as we often trade one of optimality, completeness,
accuracy, or precision for speed.
• A Heuristic (or a heuristic function) takes a look at search algorithms. At each
branching step, it evaluates the available information and makes a decision on
which branch to follow. It does so by ranking alternatives. The Heuristic is any
device that is often effective but will not guarantee work in every case.
 Mean End Analysis
• Means-ends analysis is a problem solving strategy that arose from the work on problem
solving of Newell and Simon (1972).
• In means-ends analysis, one solves a problem by considering the obstacles that stand
between the initial problem state and the goal state.
• The elimination of these obstacles are then defined as (simpler) subgoals to be
achieved. When all of the subgoals have been achieved – when all of the obstacles are
out of the way – then the main goal of interest has been achieved.
• Because the subgoals have been called up by the need to solve this main goal, means-
ends analysis can be viewed as a search strategy in which the long-range goal is always
kept in mind to guide problem solving.
• Means-ends analysis is a version of divide-and-conquer. The difference between the two
is that divide-and-conquer is purely recursive: the subproblems that are solved are
always of the same type. Means-ends analysis is more flexible, and less obviously
recursive, because the subproblems that are defined for it need not all be of the same
type.
Mean End Analysis
 Mean End Analysis
• Means-End Analysis is a problem-solving technique that identifies the current state,
defines the end goal and determines the action plan to reach the end state in a
modular way.
• End Goals are split into sub-goals and sub-sub goals and then action plans are drawn to
achieve sub-goals first and then move towards achieving the main goal progressively.
• Most of the problem-solving strategies will have either forward actions or backward
actions.
• MEA will have a mixture of action plans in either of the directions to solve the problems
in a modular way, in the sense that it attempts to solve the major problems first and get
back to minor problems later or vice versa.
 Sub Goal Strategies
• Another important strategy to use when solving problems is to identify
subgoals.
• Some problems need to be solved in steps, and then each step can be
solved separately.
• Many large and complex problems can be solved by using that strategy.
 Analogy
• Analogy in problem solving is the application of techniques that worked in
a similar situation in the past.
• This technique however may or may not lead to a solution.
• People have strong tendency to solve problem by this method.
• In this method, you tend to use the methods that worked in the past but
not sure whether the same method will solve the problem again.
 Working Backwards
• Working backwards is a solving process that can be used on word problems by
starting at the end of the problem and undoing the problem one step at a time.
• To solve a problem by working backwards, we basically want to undo the
problem step-by-step. We start at the end of the problem and work through to
the beginning.
• In other words, we do as the name of this solving process suggests - we work
backwards!
• The strategy of working backwards is used to solve problems that include a
number of linked factors or events, where some of the information has not been
provided, usually at the beginning of the problem.
• To solve these problems it is usually necessary to start with the answer and work
methodically backwards to fill in the missing information. This strategy is
extremely useful in dealing with a situation or a sequence of events.
• The events occur one after the other and each stage, or piece of information, is
affected by what comes next. Students begin at the end, with the final action,
and work through the process in reverse order to establish what happened in the
original situation.
 GPS
• The General Problem Solver (GPS) is a computer program developed in the
1950s by Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon. It was one of the earliest
examples of an artificial intelligence program designed to solve problems in a
general and systematic manner. The GPS was developed based on the
principles of heuristic search and problem-solving techniques.
• The GPS was designed to solve a wide range of problems by breaking them
down into subproblems and applying problem-solving rules and heuristics. It
used a problem-solving cycle that consisted of the following steps:
• Analysis: The GPS would analyze the current problem state and determine the goal or
subgoals to be achieved.
• Planning: Based on the analysis, the GPS would generate a plan or set of steps to
achieve the goal. It would use rules and heuristics to select appropriate actions and
operations.
• Execution: The plan generated in the planning phase would be executed, making
changes to the problem state and moving closer to the goal state.
• Testing: The GPS would test whether the current state matches the goal state. If not, it
would go back to the planning phase to generate a new plan or revise the existing plan.
 GPS
• The General Problem Solver (GPS) was a theory of human problem solving
stated in the form of a simulation program.
• The theoretical framework was information processing and attempted to
explain all behavior as a function of memory operations, control processes
and rules.
• The methodology for testing the theory involved developing a computer
simulation and then comparing the results of the simulation with human
behavior in a given task.
• Such comparisons also made use of protocol analysis in which the verbal
reports of a person solving a task are used as indicators of cognitive
processes.
• GPS was intended to provide a core set of processes that could be used to
solve a variety of different types of problems.
 GPS
• The critical step in solving a problem with GPS is the definition of the problem
space in terms of the goal to be achieved and the transformation rules.
• Using a means-end-analysis approach, GPS would divide the overall goal into
sub goals and attempt to solve each of those.
• Some of the basic solution rules include:
• (1) transform one object into another,
• (2) reduce the different between two objects, and
• (3) apply an operator to an object.
• One of the key elements need by GPS to solve problems was an operator-
difference table that specified what transformations were possible.
 GPS
• The General Problem Solver is a framework for applying means-ends
analysis to solve problems that can be specified by a list of initial states, a list
of goal states, and a list of operators that induce state transitions.
• Each operator is specified by an action name, a list of precondition states that
must hold before the operator is applied, a list of states that will hold after
the operator is applied (the add-list), and a list of states that will no longer
hold after the operator is applied (the delete-list).
• To achieve a goal state, GPS uses means-ends analysis: each operator is
examined to find one that contains the goal state in its add-list (it looks for
an appropriate operator).
• It then tries to achieve all of that operator's precondition states. If not all of
the preconditions can be achieved (the operator is not applicable), then GPS
looks for another appropriate operator.
• If none exists, then the goal can't be achieved. When all of the goal states
have been achieved, the problem is solved.
THANK YOU