MIND & SOCIETY
Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences |
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| 1, 2007, Mind&Society, vol. 6 |
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Articles:
Dolly Chugh • Max H. Bazerman
Bounded awareness: What you fail to see can hurt you
Abstract
We argue that people actually often fail to perceive and process stimuli easily available to them. In other words, we challenge the tacit assumption that awareness is unbounded and provide evidence that humans regularly fail to see and use stimuli and information easily available to them. We call this phenomenon “bounded awareness” (Bazerman and Chugh 2005). Bounded awareness is a phenomenon that encompasses a variety of psychological processes, all of which lead to the same error: a failure to see, seek, use, or share important and relevant information that is easily seen, sought, used, or shared. We begin by first describing perceptual mental processes in which obvious information is missed – that is, simply not seen – by the visual perceiver. Inattentional blindness and change blindness are examples. We then extend this phenomenon to decision making and forecasting, using evidence about focalism to illustrate how people over focus on some information and fail to use other easily available information. We next examine how these processes of bounded awareness may extend to other important domains and across levels of analysis, such as information-sharing in groups, decision making in negotiators, and in competitive bidding situations such as auctions.
David DeMoss
The connectionist self in action
Abstract
The brain is a connectionist system, a parallel distributed processor. The connectionist brain with its abilities to categorise, to develop goal directed dispositions, to problem solve what it should do, and to second order reflect has the capacity to become a free, rational, moral, agent – that is, the capacity to become a self; it becomes a self by engaging second order reflection in the hermeneutical task of constructing narratives that rationalise action. The first half of this thesis relies for its defense on two previous essays of mine; Sect. 2 provides a brief summary of this background. The second half, the claim that the connectionist brain constitutes a self by constructing rational narratives, is the present essay’s focus. Sect. 3 defends this thesis. Sect. 4 examines John Searle’s recent writings on rationality in action, arguing against his claim that an explanation of behavior citing the agent’s reasons “requires us to postulate an irreducible self”.
Symposium on:
Cognition and Rationality – Part II
Introduction by Massimiliano Carrara, Paolo Cherubini, Pierdaniele Giaretta
Maria Bagassi • Laura Macchi
The “vanishing” of the disjunction effect by sensible procrastination
Abstract The disjunction effect (Tversky and Shafir 1992) occurs when decision makers prefer option x (versus y) when knowing that event A occurs and also when knowing that event A does not occur, but they refuse x (or prefer y) when not knowing whether or not A occurs. This form of incoherence violates Savage's (1954) sure thing principle, one of the basic axioms of the rational theory of decision making. The phenomenon was attributed to a lack of clear reasons for accepting an option (x) when the subjects are under uncertainty. Through a pragmatic analysis of the task and a consequent reformulation of it, we show that the effect does not depend on the presence of uncertainty, but on the introduction into the text problem of a non relevant goal.
Jean Baratgin • Guy Politzer
The psychology of dynamic probability judgment: Order effect, normative theories, and experimental methodology
Abstract
The Bayesian model is used in psychology as the reference for the study of dynamic probability judgment. The main limit induced by this model is that it confines the study of revision of degrees of belief to the sole situations of revision in which the universe is static (revising situations). However it may happen that individuals have to revise their degrees of belief when the message they learn specifies a change of direction in the universe, which is considered as changing with time (updating situations). We analyze the main results of the experimental literature with regard to elementary qualitative properties of these two situations of revision. First, the order effect phenomenon is confronted with the commutative property. Second, an apparent new phenomenon is presented: the redundancy effect that is confronted with the idempotence property. Finally, results obtained in this kind of experimental situations are reinterpreted in the light of pragmatic analysis.
Monica Bucciarelli
How the construction of mental models improves learning
Abstract
In this paper I present a framework where possible relations between learning and mental models are explored. In particular, I’ll be concerned with non symbolic gestures accompanying discourse and their role in inducing the construction of models and therefore deep comprehension and learning in the listener. Also, I’ll be concerned with cognitive and socio cognitive conflicts and their roles in inducing construction of alternative models of a problem and therefore in learning to reason. Human ability to learn is of great importance for individuals interested in change. Indeed, to learn both declarative and procedural knowledge means to change, and in order to be able to intervene on change in a desired way it is necessary to have a theory of the mental representations and processes involved in learning and a theory of the communication and contexts that favour learning.
Roberto Festa
Verisimilitude, cross classification, and prediction logic. Approaching the statistical truth by falsified qualitative theories
Abstract
In this paper it is argued that qualitative theories (Q theories) can be used to describe the statistical structure of cross classified populations and that the notion of verisimilitude provides an appropriate tool for measuring the statistical adequacy of Q theories. First of all, a short outline of the post Popperian approaches to verisimilitude and of the related verisimilitudinarian non falsificationist methodologies (VNF methodologies) is given. Secondly, the notion of Q theory is explicated, and the qualitative verisimilitude of Q theories is defined. Afterwards, appropriate measures for the statistical verisimilitude of Q theories are introduced, so to obtain a clear formulation of the intuitive idea that the statistical truth about cross classified populations can be approached by falsified Q theories. Finally, it is argued that some basic intuitions underlying VNF methodologies are shared by the so called prediction logic, developed by the statisticians and social scientists David K. Hildebrand, James D. Laing, and Howard Rosenthal.
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