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22 - Reasoning, Decision Making, and Rationality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Jonathan St. B. T. Evans
Affiliation:
University of Plymouth
David E. Over
Affiliation:
Durham University
Ken I. Manktelow
Affiliation:
University of Wolverhampton
Jonathan E. Adler
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Lance J. Rips
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
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Summary

Introduction

The psychological fields of reasoning and of decision making are reported in different literatures, mostly by different authors and with little cross-reference. Is this just a matter of research traditions, or are the cognitive processes involved fundamentally different? On the face of it, a reasoning task is significantly different from a decision task. In the study of deductive reasoning, for example, subjects may be presented with the premises of some argument and asked whether or not a conclusion follows. For example, a subject may be asked to evaluate a syllogism such as

  1. No A are B

  2. Some B are not C

  3. Therefore, some C are not A

and to indicate whether or not the conclusion follows. This is presumed to involve a process of reasoning from the premises which may or may not support the conclusion. If the subject has deductive competence – discussed below – it should be possible for him or her to solve the problem set without further information. In this sense, deductive reasoning tasks can be viewed as a special case of well-defined problem-solving tasks, whose main purpose is to investigate people's ability to understand and apply logical principles.

Decision-making tasks, on the other hand, involve choices between actions and normally involve commitment to particular acts at one point in time, whose consequences will only later be apparent. A simple example might be deciding whether or not to place a bet on a horse.

Type
Chapter
Information
Reasoning
Studies of Human Inference and its Foundations
, pp. 437 - 450
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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