Thinking
Thinking is the mental manipulation of information - forming concepts, reasoning, solving problems, judging and creating; the exam tests strategies, biases and creativity.
Concepts and problem solving
Concepts group objects by shared features; prototypes are best examples. Algorithms guarantee a solution but are slow; heuristics are fast rules of thumb that can err. Means-end analysis reduces the gap to the goal; working backward and analogy are alternatives; insight is a sudden restructuring.
Obstacles
Functional fixedness (Duncker's candle problem) blocks novel uses of objects; mental set applies a past solution rigidly; confirmation bias seeks only supporting evidence.
Reasoning and decision making
Deductive reasoning moves from general premises to a necessary conclusion (validity matters, not the truth of premises); inductive reasoning generalises from cases (probability). Judgement biases: availability, representativeness, anchoring, framing, overconfidence and hindsight bias. Group decisions can suffer groupthink or polarisation.
Creativity
Guilford: divergent thinking (fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration) versus convergent thinking; Torrance tests measure it; incubation and illumination follow preparation.
Worked example
Asked to mount a candle on a wall, people fixate on the box as a container. Reasoning: seeing the box only as a container is functional fixedness; once it is seen as a shelf, the solution appears.
Traps
- Calling a heuristic an algorithm.
- Confusing deductive with inductive reasoning.
- Treating divergent thinking as identical to intelligence.
- Assuming group decisions are always better.