Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vsgnj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T10:04:12.449Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

22 - Reasoning, Decision Making, and Rationality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Jonathan St. B. T. Evans ,
David E. Over  and
Ken I. Manktelow
Edited by
Jonathan E. Adler  and
Lance J. Rips
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
Get access

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, E. (1975). The logic of conditionals: An application of probability to deductive logic. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Audi, R. (1989). Practical reasoning. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baron, J. (1985). Rationality and intelligence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barston, J. L. (1986). An investigation into belief biases in reasoning. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Plymouth.Google Scholar
Cheng, P. W., & Holyoak, K. J. (1985). Pragmatic reasoning schemas. Cognitive Psychology, 17, 391–416.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cheng, P. W., & Holyoak, K. J. (1989). On the natural selection of reasoning theories. Cognition, 33, 285–313.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, L. J. (1981). Can human irrationality be experimentally demonstrated?Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 4, 317–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition, 33, 187–276.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1996). Are humans good intuitive statisticians after all? Rethinking some conclusions from the literature on judgement under uncertainty. Cognition, 58, 1–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (1978). Brainstorms. Cited by Stich, S. P. (1985). Could man be an irrational animal?Synthese, 64, 115–135.Google Scholar
Earman, J. (1992). Bayes or bust: A critical examination of Bayesian confirmation theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Edgington, D. (1992). Validity, uncertainty and vagueness. Analysis, 52, 193–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T. (1989). Bias in reasoning: Causes and consequences. Hove, UK: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T. (1991). Theories of human reasoning: The fragmented state of the art. Theory and Psychology, 1, 83–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T. (1992). The psychology of deductive reasoning. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T. (1993). Bias and rationality. In Manktelow, K. I. & Over, D. E. (Eds.), Rationality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., Barston, J. L., & Pollard, P. (1983). On the conflict between logic and belief in syllogistic reasoning. Memory & Cognition, 11, 295–306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Evans, J. St. B. T., Newstead, S. E., & Byrne, R. M. J. (1993). Human reasoning: The psychology of deduction. Hove, UK: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., & Perry, T. (1990). Belief bias in children's reasoning. Unpublished manuscript, University of Plymouth.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., & Pollard, P. (1990). Belief bias and problem complexity in deductive reasoning. In Caverni, J. P., Fabre, J. M., & Gonzales, M. (Eds.), Cognitive biases. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G., Hoffrage, U., & Kleinbölting, H. (1991). Probabilistic mental models: A Brunswikian theory of confidence. Psychological Review, 98, 506–528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gigerenzer, G., & Hug, K. (1992). Domain-specific reasoning: social contracts, cheating, and perspective change. Cognition, 43, 127–171.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. P. (Eds.), Syntax and semantics. Vol 3: Speech acts. New York: Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Griffin, D., & Tversky, A. (1992). The weighing of evidence and the determinants of confidence. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 411–435.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griggs, R. A., & Cox, J. R. (1982). The elusive thematic-materials effect in Wason's selection task. British Journal of Psychology, 73, 407–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howson, C., & Urbach, P. (1989). Scientific reasoning: The Bayesian approach. La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental models. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1993). Human and machine thinking. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Byrne, R. M. J. (1991). Deduction. Hove, UK: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D., & Varey, C. (1991). Notes on the psychology of utility. In Elster, J. & Roemer, J. (Eds.), Interpersonal comparisons of well-being. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klayman, J., & Ha, Y.-W. (1987). Confirmation, disconfirmation and information in hypotheses testing. Psychological Review, 94, 211–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. (1981). A subjectivist's guide to objective chance. In Jeffrey, R. (Ed.), Studies in inductive logic and probability. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Light, P. H., Girotto, V., & Legrenzi, P. (1990). Children's reasoning on conditional promises and permissions. Cognitive Development, 5, 369–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manktelow, K. I., & Over, D. E. (1987). Reasoning and rationality. Mind and Language, 2, 199–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manktelow, K. I., & Over, D. E. (1990). Deontic thought and the selection task. In Gilhooly, K., Keane, M., Logie, R. & Erdos, G. (Eds.), Lines of thinking: Reflections on the psychology of thought (Vol. 1). Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Manktelow, K. I., & Over, D. E. (1991). Social roles and utilities in reasoning with deontic conditionals. Cognition, 43, 183–188.Google ScholarPubMed
Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human problem solving. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Newstead, S. E., & Evans, J. St. B. T. (1993). Mental models as an explanation of belief bias effects in syllogistic reasoning. Cognition, 45, 93–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newstead, S. E., Pollard, P., Evans, J. St. B. T., & Allen, J. (1992). The source of belief bias in syllogistic reasoning. Cognition, 45, 257–284.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oakhill, J., & Garnham, A. (1993). On theories of belief bias in syllogistic reasoning. Cognition, 46, 87–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oakhill, J., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1985). The effect of belief on the spontaneous production of syllogistic conclusions. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 37A, 553–570.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oakhill, J., Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Garnham, A. (1989). Believability and syllogistic reasoning. Cognition, 31, 117–140.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oaksford, M., & Chater, N. (1992). Bounded rationality in taking risks and drawing inferences. Theory and Psychology, 2, 225–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, D. P. (1993). Mental logic and irrationality: We can put a man on the moon, so why can't we solve those logical reasoning problems. In Manktelow, K. I. & Over, D. E. (Eds.), Rationality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Over, D. E., & Manktelow, K. I. (1993). Rationality, utility, and deontic reasoning. In Manktelow, K. I. & Over, D. E. (Eds.), Rationality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Politzer, G., & Nguyen-Xuan, A. (1992). Reasoning about conditional promises and warnings: Darwinian algorithms, mental models, relevance judgements or pragmatic schemas?Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 44A, 401–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popper, K. R. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Popper, K. R. (1962). Conjectures and refutations. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Revlin, R., Leirer, V., Yopp, H. & Yopp, R. (1980). The belief bias effect in formal reasoning: The influence of knowledge on logic. Memory & Cognition, 8, 584–592.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Savage, L. (1954). The foundations of statistics. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1957). Models of man: Social and rational. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1983). Reason in human affairs. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Slote, M. (1989). Beyond optimizing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevenson, R. J. (1993). Rationality and reality. In Manktelow, K. I. & Over, D. E. (Eds.), Rationality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stich, S. P. (1985). Could man be an irrational animal?Synthese, 64, 115–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1983). Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment. Psychological Review, 90, 293–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winterfeldt, D., & Edwards, W. (1986). Decision analysis and behavioural research. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wilkins, M. C. (1928). The effect of changed material on the ability to do formal syllogistic reasoning. Archives of Psychology, No. 102.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×