Reasoning

• Reasoning


  The cognitive process of forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences based on available information and prior knowledge
• Decision making


  The process of selecting the best course of action from among multiple alternatives
• Deductive reasoning


  • The making and evaluation of arguments following a logical set of rules or principles
• Conclusion interpretation approaches


  • Describe how people understand information and come to conclusions
  • Heuristic approach: using mental shortcuts to quickly reach conclusions
  • Systematic approach: carefully evaluating evidence and considering all available information before drawing a conclusion
• Syllogistic reasoning


  A process by which a conclusion follows necessarily from a series of premises (statements)
• Conditional reasoning


  A process by which a conclusion follows from conditional statements
• Deductive reasoning approaches


  • Understanding and representing the premises, combining these representations, and drawing a conclusion
• Representation-explanation approaches


  • Focus on how we represent the arguments
  • Difficulty of an argument and likelihood of making an error are the result of either incomplete information or incorrect representation of the argument
• Surface approach


  A way of studying or learning where the main goal is to memorize facts and information to pass exams, rather than truly understanding the material
• Dual-process framework approach


  • Involves two different ways our minds process information: System 1 (unconscious, quick, uses shortcuts) and System 2 (intentional, calculated, more accurate but slower)
• Framework approach


  A method for analyzing qualitative data, like building a structure to understand and make sense of the information collected during research or observation
• Inductive reasoning


  A type of reasoning that involves drawing general conclusions based on specific observations or evidence, examining the likelihood of a conclusion being true rather than its absolute truth
• Analogical reasoning


  A cognitive process where individuals use similarities between two or more things to infer further similarities, identifying a familiar situation (the source) and applying its characteristics to a new, less familiar situation (the target)
• Category induction


  A type of inductive reasoning where you infer general principles or characteristics about a category based on specific examples or instances within that category, identifying commonalities among members of a category and using these commonalities to make predictions or draw conclusions about other members of the same category
• Causal reasoning


  The process of determining the cause-and-effect relationship between events or phenomena, identifying patterns of events and inferring that one event (the cause) leads to another event (the effect) based on observed regularities or empirical evidence
• Hypothesis testing


  Actively seeking out evidence to support or refute one's existing beliefs and theories about the world, helping individuals learn and adapt to new information by adjusting their beliefs and understanding accordingly
• Counterfactual thinking


  The mental simulation of alternative outcomes or events that could have occurred under different circumstances, imagining scenarios that are different from what actually happened but are plausible given the context
• Everyday reasoning


  The ability to understand and make sense of everyday situations using logical reasoning skills and common sense principles, applying basic principles of logic such as cause-and-effect relationships, conditional reasoning, analogical reasoning, and probabilistic reasoning
• Decision making


  Assessing and making choices between different options
• General model of decision making

  1. Setting goals

  2. Gathering information

  3. Structuring the decision

  4. Making a final choice

  5. Evaluation
• Heuristics


  Mental shortcuts that simplify decision-making but can lead to errors
• Biases


  Systematic deviations from rationality or accuracy in judgment, often influenced by heuristics
• Representativeness bias


  Making judgments or decisions based on how people or situations match a particular prototype or stereotype, considering a current event or situation in light of how similar it is to a prior event or situation
• Availability bias


  The human tendency to rely on information that comes readily to mind when evaluating situations or making decisions, believing that the readily available information is more representative of fact than is the case
• Framing bias


  Making a decision based on the way the information is presented, as opposed to just on the facts themselves, where the same facts presented in two different ways can lead to making different judgments or decisions
• Descriptive decision making approaches

  Concerned with characterising and explaining regularities in the choices that people are disposed to make, distinguished from normative decision theory which seeks to provide an account of the choices that people ought to be disposed to make
• Prospect theory

  A theory of decision making under conditions of risk, where decisions are based on judgments which are assessments about the external state of the world, made especially challenging under conditions of uncertainty, and involve internal conflict over value trade-offs
• Dual-process framework


  • A framework used to explain how people think, involving two different streams or means of thinking: System 1 (unconscious, quick, uses shortcuts) and System 2 (intentional, calculated, more accurate but slower)
• Ethnographic thinking


  The thought processes and patterns ethnographers develop through their practice, characterized by increased openness, valuing the process of exploration, and highly interpretive thinking