Thinking Inforgraphic (Nick Calvey)

Decision-Making

Problem-Solving

Base Rate Fallacy

Modus Pollens/Tollens Effect

Functional Fixidity

Expert Memory Chunking Effect

Endowment Effect

Framing Effects

Exceptionality Effect

Schema Distortions

Hindsight Bias

Reasoning

Infographic for Reasoning, decision-making, and problem solving

Key:= Definition= Real-World Example= Experimental Proof

Real-World Hypothetical: A coach who only uses a medicine ball for core exercises likely won't realize the cardio benefits of tweaked exercises.

Definition: The tendency for mental creative blocks when attempting to think of new ways to use or interact with an established object.

Experimental Proof: Participants were asked to prevent candle-wax from dripping using materials like a box of tacks, and they consistently struggled to repurpose the use of the box as a platform.

• Ducker, Karl. "On Problem-Solving." Psychological Monographs, vol. 58, no. 5, 1945, pp. i-113.

Experimental Proof: Chess players with varying skills were tasked with remembering both game-like/realistic formations of pieces and impossible ones. Experts proved to remember possible formations more than weaker players.

• Chase, William., Herbert, Simon. "Perception in Chess." Cognitive Psychology, vol. 4, no. 1, 1973, pp. 55-81.

Real-World Hypothetical: Expert golfers can synthesize all the various movements required for a perfect shot in one fluid motion.

Definition: The ability of someone advanced in their field to group large swaths of information into more abstractly practical 'chunks.'

Experimental Proof: Students were tasked with recalling the objects in a recently visited office, and their recall favored/tailored toward stereotypical office objects over observed 'unusual' objects.

• William, Brewer., James, Treyens. "Role of schemata in memory for places." Cognitive Psychology, vol. 13, no. 2, 1981, pp. 207-230.

Real-World Hypothetical: A marathon runner who misremembers the weather during their first marathon as more intense due to the difficulty of the run.

Definition: The tendency to tailor memory toward schema/groupings of knowledge, which affects one's ability to remember past experiences objectively.

Experimental Proof: Participants were asked to choose between a positively phrased option and a negative one, participants favored the positive one in decision-making

• Tversky, Amos., Kahneman, Daniel. "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice." Science, vol. 211, no. 4481, 1981, pp. 453-458.

Real-World Hypothetical: An athlete learns less from his strength coach using negative feedback than from his conditioning coach, who uses positive feedback.

Definition: The idea that a piece of information can be presented in various ways, each way uniquely affecting the way one understands/reacts it.

Experimental Proof: Participants analyzed and judged different statistical information and frequently overlooked important statistical information in favor of quick generalized prediction.

• Tversky, Amos., Kahneman, Daniel. On the psychology of prediction. Psychological Review, vol. 80, no. 4, 1973, pp. 237-251.

Real-World Hypothetical: A sports fan glorifying the highlights/statistics of an exciting new player over more skilled highlights/statistics from a player 10 years ago.

Definition: The tendency to be influenced more by highly specific and new information than by more general probabilities and historical data.

Experimental Proof: Participants predicted a higher price of a mug if they were endowed with it compared to those who were not.

• Kahneman, Daniel, et al. "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias." Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 5, no. 1, 1991, pp. 193-206.

Real-World Hypothetical: Supporters tend to overvalue their teams' players simply because it is their team and not statistical metrics.

Definition: The tendency to value the same object more when it is in one's possession rather than if they never owned it.

Experimental Proof: When reasoning, participants showed that validating a premise (pollens) was more effective due to the ability to reinterpret premises in beneficial ways.

• Rips, Lance. "The Psychology of Proof: Deductive Reasoning in Human Thinking." MIT Press.

Real-World Hypothetical: When LeBron scores 30 points, his team always wins; when his team loses, fans tend to assume he didn't score 30 points, which isn't necessarily true.

Definition: People reason better when finding conclusions from a set of premises rather than deductively finding the premises from a conclusion.

Experimental Proof: Participants judged a hypothetical routine with different alterations, which eventually had an exceptional outcome. By completing a 'what if,' they consistently overvalued the impact of specific alterations they read.

• Tversky, Amos., Kahneman, Daniel. "Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability." Cognitive Psychology, vol. 5, no. 2, 1973, pp. 207-232.

Real-World Hypothetical: A morning gym-goer is forced to go later and hurts her shoulder; she might attribute the injury mainly to the change in time.

Definition: When analyzing past events, unusual changes stand out and impact human reasoning more when exceptional results occur.

Experimental Proof: People who experienced terrorist attacks misremembered and exaggerated their risk judgment when reflecting back on the day of the event

• Fischhoff, Baruch., Gonzalez, Roxana., Lerner, Jennifer., Small, Deborah. "Evolving Judgements of Terror Risks: Foresight, Hindsight, and Emotion." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, vol. 11, no. 2, 2005, pp. 124-139.

Real-World Hypothetical: When one's team wins the championship, some falsely believe they foresaw the victory from the start of the season.

Definition: The tendency to misremember one's past perspective/ability to foresee events that they eventually lived through.

Definition: The tendency for mental creative blocks when attempting to think of new ways to use or interact with an established object.

Real-World Hypothetical: A coach who only uses a medicine ball for core exercises likely won't realize the cardio benefits of tweaked exercises.

Experimental Proof: Participants were asked to prevent candle-wax from dripping using materials like a box of tacks, and they consistently struggled to repurpose the use of the box as a platform.

• Ducker, Karl. "On Problem-Solving." Psychological Monographs, vol. 58, no. 5, 1945, pp. i-113.

Decision-Making

Problem-Solving

Base Rate Fallacy

Modus Pollens/Tollens Effect

Functional Fixidity

Expert Memory Chunking Effect

Endowment Effect

Framing Effects

Exceptionality Effect

Schema Distortions

Hindsight Bias

Reasoning

Infographic for Reasoning, decision-making, and problem solving

Key:= Definition= Real-World Example= Experimental Proof

Real-World Hypothetical: A coach who only uses a medicine ball for core exercises likely won't realize the cardio benefits of tweaked exercises.

Definition: The tendency for mental creative blocks when attempting to think of new ways to use or interact with an established object.

Experimental Proof: Participants were asked to prevent candle-wax from dripping using materials like a box of tacks, and they consistently struggled to repurpose the use of the box as a platform.

• Ducker, Karl. "On Problem-Solving." Psychological Monographs, vol. 58, no. 5, 1945, pp. i-113.

Experimental Proof: Chess players with varying skills were tasked with remembering both game-like/realistic formations of pieces and impossible ones. Experts proved to remember possible formations more than weaker players.

• Chase, William., Herbert, Simon. "Perception in Chess." Cognitive Psychology, vol. 4, no. 1, 1973, pp. 55-81.

Real-World Hypothetical: Expert golfers can synthesize all the various movements required for a perfect shot in one fluid motion.

Definition: The ability of someone advanced in their field to group large swaths of information into more abstractly practical 'chunks.'

Experimental Proof: Students were tasked with recalling the objects in a recently visited office, and their recall favored/tailored toward stereotypical office objects over observed 'unusual' objects.

• William, Brewer., James, Treyens. "Role of schemata in memory for places." Cognitive Psychology, vol. 13, no. 2, 1981, pp. 207-230.

Real-World Hypothetical: A marathon runner who misremembers the weather during their first marathon as more intense due to the difficulty of the run.

Definition: The tendency to tailor memory toward schema/groupings of knowledge, which affects one's ability to remember past experiences objectively.

Experimental Proof: Participants were asked to choose between a positively phrased option and a negative one, participants favored the positive one in decision-making

• Tversky, Amos., Kahneman, Daniel. "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice." Science, vol. 211, no. 4481, 1981, pp. 453-458.

Real-World Hypothetical: An athlete learns less from his strength coach using negative feedback than from his conditioning coach, who uses positive feedback.

Definition: The idea that a piece of information can be presented in various ways, each way uniquely affecting the way one understands/reacts it.

Experimental Proof: Participants analyzed and judged different statistical information and frequently overlooked important statistical information in favor of quick generalized prediction.

• Tversky, Amos., Kahneman, Daniel. On the psychology of prediction. Psychological Review, vol. 80, no. 4, 1973, pp. 237-251.

Real-World Hypothetical: A sports fan glorifying the highlights/statistics of an exciting new player over more skilled highlights/statistics from a player 10 years ago.

Definition: The tendency to be influenced more by highly specific and new information than by more general probabilities and historical data.

Experimental Proof: Participants predicted a higher price of a mug if they were endowed with it compared to those who were not.

• Kahneman, Daniel, et al. "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias." Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 5, no. 1, 1991, pp. 193-206.

Real-World Hypothetical: Supporters tend to overvalue their teams' players simply because it is their team and not statistical metrics.

Definition: The tendency to value the same object more when it is in one's possession rather than if they never owned it.

Experimental Proof: When reasoning, participants showed that validating a premise (pollens) was more effective due to the ability to reinterpret premises in beneficial ways.

• Rips, Lance. "The Psychology of Proof: Deductive Reasoning in Human Thinking." MIT Press.

Real-World Hypothetical: When LeBron scores 30 points, his team always wins; when his team loses, fans tend to assume he didn't score 30 points, which isn't necessarily true.

Definition: People reason better when finding conclusions from a set of premises rather than deductively finding the premises from a conclusion.

Experimental Proof: Participants judged a hypothetical routine with different alterations, which eventually had an exceptional outcome. By completing a 'what if,' they consistently overvalued the impact of specific alterations they read.

• Tversky, Amos., Kahneman, Daniel. "Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability." Cognitive Psychology, vol. 5, no. 2, 1973, pp. 207-232.

Real-World Hypothetical: A morning gym-goer is forced to go later and hurts her shoulder; she might attribute the injury mainly to the change in time.

Definition: When analyzing past events, unusual changes stand out and impact human reasoning more when exceptional results occur.

Experimental Proof: People who experienced terrorist attacks misremembered and exaggerated their risk judgment when reflecting back on the day of the event

• Fischhoff, Baruch., Gonzalez, Roxana., Lerner, Jennifer., Small, Deborah. "Evolving Judgements of Terror Risks: Foresight, Hindsight, and Emotion." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, vol. 11, no. 2, 2005, pp. 124-139.

Real-World Hypothetical: When one's team wins the championship, some falsely believe they foresaw the victory from the start of the season.

Definition: The tendency to misremember one's past perspective/ability to foresee events that they eventually lived through.

Definition: The tendency for mental creative blocks when attempting to think of new ways to use or interact with an established object.

Real-World Hypothetical: A coach who only uses a medicine ball for core exercises likely won't realize the cardio benefits of tweaked exercises.

Experimental Proof: Participants were asked to prevent candle-wax from dripping using materials like a box of tacks, and they consistently struggled to repurpose the use of the box as a platform.

• Ducker, Karl. "On Problem-Solving." Psychological Monographs, vol. 58, no. 5, 1945, pp. i-113.