Holy Heuristics. A guest post by Justyna Dorris.

            Have you ever heard the word heuristics before? No, well me neither until this year and it turns out we use them every day and this is just the fancy word which simply means a “rule of thumb” that provides a best guess solution to a problem. Now that you know what a heuristic is, you’ll realize that you do this every day. In class we talked about three of the most commonly known ones, which are: the gambler’s fallacy, availability heuristic, and anchoring and adjustment heuristic. Let’s do a quick rundown of each of these before we move on to another one.

To explain gambler’s fallacy, let’s use the example of flipping a coin and getting heads or tails. Say you flip it eight times, the first one is tails, and then you get tails six times in a row, what will the eighth flip be? Odds are you said heads and your reason is because it was “due to land on heads.” That right there is the gambler’s fallacy. We have a 50/50 chance of getting heads or tails, so after a long run of getting tails you’re more likely to believe that you’ll get heads next even though it’s always a 50/50 chance.

To explain the availability heuristic, let’s think about a few things. Are you more likely to die from a car accident or stomach cancer? Most people will say car accident, but in all reality more people die from stomach cancer. We say car accident over stomach cancer because we hear about people dying from car accidents more often than we hear about people dying from stomach cancer, so this information is readily available to us. The things that we hear about more on a daily basis are the things that will come to our minds first. Another example of this is do more words start with the letter K or have K as the third letter? Believe it or not more words have K as the third letter than the first, so why are we more likely to say that there are more words that start with K? The answer is simply because it’s easier for us to think of words that start with K rather than words that have it as its third letter, but as soon as someone starts saying words that have K as the third letter you’ll think of a bunch of them (i.e. bike, like, lake, cake, etc.).

The anchoring and adjustment heuristic is when we are given certain information and then adjust it up or down. So someone asked you, are there more than 25 people in your psychology class without counting? You look and see there’s more and then they ask you how many people are there, most people will say 30 and they got to this by doing 25 people, plus 5 is 30. Or usually the chips you buy from the store are on sale for $2.50 but this week they’re being sold for $3.25. This is also an example of this heuristic because the store took the usual sale price and increased it from $2.50 to $3.00. They adjusted it from low to high which is a common practice for stores to do. Now that we understand these three heuristics let’s move on to another kind.

            A lesser known heuristic is the simulation heuristic, which is “a more specific form of the availability heuristic that explains why people experience regret and use counterfactual thinking. Simply stated the simulation heuristic pertains to how likely one thinks an outcome will occur” (Psychowiki.com). “The mental processes, by which people construct scenarios, or examples, resemble the running of the simulation model. Mental simulation appears to be used to make predictions, assess probabilities and evaluate casual statements. A particular form of simulation, which concerns the mental undoing of certain events, plays an important role in the analysis of regret and close calls. Two rules of mental undoing are proposed. According to the downhill rule, people undo events by removing surprising or unexpected occurrences. According to the focus rule, people manipulate the entities on which they focus” (Kahneman & Tversky 1981).

There are different reasons for when people will use this heuristic. The first is when someone has no previous information about something and they have to make a general prediction. So for example, when two people meet for the first time, neither one of them knows anything about the other so they make basic predictions about each other. When it comes to assessing probabilities’ using this heuristic, an example would be what would have happened if Lincoln wasn’t shot by John Wilkes Booth, how would history have been different? Or what will happen if you don’t study for your cognitive psychology final? Finally an example of evaluating casual statements would be something like: did studying for an hour cause you to get an 85% on your test or was the test just very easy? So as you can see we do use this heuristic in our lives when it comes to certain things. The other three heuristics mentioned are the better known ones and the ones that are used more often, but all of them are valuable when it comes to us making decisions and guesses about things.

Cognitive Psychology Connecting mind, research, and everyday experiences by E. Bruce

Goldstein

http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Simulation_Heuristic

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1981). The simulation heuristic (No. TR-5). STANFORD UNIV CA DEPT OF PSYCHOLOGY. 

Just Call Me The Brain Mythbuster!

     In this post we are going to discuss and up-and-coming field: cognitive neuroscience. We are also going to debunk some myths about the brain.

     Cognitive neuroscience studies the biology behind cognition. It focuses on the biological connection between the brain and cognition. If you visit the website for the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (http://www.cogneurosociety.org/), you will find a quote by one Eric R. Kandel who says, “Cognitive Neuroscience – with its concern about perception, action, memory, language, and selective attention – will increasingly come to represent the central focus of all Neurosciences in the 21^st century.” Now while I can’t argue that this is a fact, I also can’t argue that it is improbable. Cognitive Neuroscience seeks to explain a lot of things we otherwise would have no understanding of, especially things we, as a society, want to know more about such as Alzheimer’s Disease and how to help/slow down/prevent it.  

     Cognitive Neuroscience, as well as general Neuroscience, is also responsible for our ability to reject certain myths about the brain.

     For example, we do not use 10% of our brain. We use 100% of our brain. Where does this myth come from? Well our brains do this thing called culling, and when we are around seven years old, early childhood, we have a lot more neurons and neural connections than we need. As we get to young adulthood, our brain “culls” these surplus connections to increase the efficiency of the neural connections in our brains. So though we may have fewer neurons than we did when we were younger, we are still using the full power of our brains.

     It is NOT all downhill after 40. It is often drilled into our heads that as you get older mental abilities decrease, but this is not entirely true. Yes, cognitive skills decline as you age; for example, it is easier for a younger child to learn another language compared to your middle-aged self. However, some mental skills improve such as vocabulary and regulation of emotions.

     People are not left-brained OR right-brained; we use both sides of our brain. If we didn’t need both sides, evolution would have disposed of one side centuries ago. While certain functions of the brain are dominated by certain hemispheres, common everyday tasks require the use of both hemispheres. (So that quiz you just took on Facebook about which side you are, is not actually accurate).

     Drug use does not cause holes in your brain. Only physical trauma can cause holes in your brain. Though I am not condoning the use of drugs, I find it important to specify that drugs do not cause holes in your brain. They do, however, cause a reduction in size of key regions of the brain and interfere with the set chemical connections of the brain. On a similar note, alcohol does not ALWAYS kill brain cells. Moderate amounts are acceptable, however if you blackout consistently each week (which you can read more about in my earlier post “Last Friday Night”) then you may be killing a decent amount of your brain cells.

     Your brain is entirely capable of creating new cells. In fact, it generates new cells constantly. It also continues to do so as you age.

     Blasting classical music will not increase your intelligence. Before you put some headphones on your pregnant wife’s belly to make your unborn child smarter, take note of this: it doesn’t actually do anything. There is no evidence of it increasing a child’s intelligence. In fact, there is actually some evidence that it decreases a child’s vocabulary.

     Playing games does not improve cognitive function. While you may improve your vocabulary or puzzle-solving skills, you won’t actually improve your brain’s overall function. To maintain the “youth” of your brain, workout: not your mind, your body. Good nutrition and consistent exercise will preserve your mental abilities more so than any “mind game.”

     Brain damage/brain injuries are NOT always permanent. Sometimes the brain is capable of repairing itself. Although it depends on location and severity, it is important to note that they are not all permanent. In fact, it has been seen in some instances that the brain is actually capable of “rerouting” and developing new connections to repair its mental abilities while not necessarily repairing its physical state.

I hope you found these myths interesting. Keep these in mind and the next time someone tries to mention one of these you can shut them down (politely of course!).

http://www.brainfacts.org/neuromyths/

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Top-Ten-Myths-About-the-Brain.html?c=y&page=2

Heuristics in Politics. A guest post by Sal Schiano.

       In What Americans Know about Politics[i], Michael Carpini describes the availability heuristic: “what Americans know most about politics is what is most readily available to them.”

Research has shown time and again that the majority of voters in America know almost nothing about the American political system and their representatives.[ii] How then, do they decide who to vote for office? This is one of the central questions in political psychology: how does an uninformed public make choices? The question can be answered through the science of cognitive psychology.

        The answer is through the use of heuristics, or “shortcuts” of understanding. The average U.S. citizen does not spend all of their time in determining who they are going to vote for in the next election. In fact the majority spend little to no time in evaluating the actualities of political candidates. The average American is busy and has no time for this, nor do they believe their vote matters anyways. Instead, to choose candidates they rely on the use of heuristics. This use may be accurate often but may also lead to inaccurate assumptions. Politicians are aware of the public’s ignorance and use of heuristics, they therefore employ cognitive psychological methods to try and secure votes. Priming, framing, and activation are three tools politicians use for elections to gain more votes, but they would not be possible without the prior knowledge of certain heuristics.

        Lau & Redlawsk attribute the use of five major heuristics in determining who the public votes for.[iii] What they determine as the most important heuristic is party affiliation. This refers to which party a particular candidate belongs to, anywhere from Libertarian to Communist, or the more common: Democrat and Republican. The voter identifies which party they believe they agree with more and often choose the candidate that too belongs to that party, this is the party heuristic. A similar heuristic is the ideology heuristic. Voters rely on some of the choices representatives make and group them with other decisions they think would be made because of the one particular decision previously made. This heuristic is flawed as it could cause an individual to vote for a candidate who say, may not stand for gun rights even though they are pro-military. 

       Another heuristic used by voters is the endorsement heuristic: when voters attribute the qualities of the endorser of a particular candidate to the political candidate. Politicians have used this heuristic to their advantage when they seek out a particular endorsement from a celebrity, company, etc. For example, one from a popular former president, such as President Obama did with Bill Clinton in 2008 and again in 2012. Voters know Bill Clinton and many liked him, because they like Bill and Bill likes Barack, they like Barack.

       A common heuristic that is not referenced often is the viability heuristic. Polls provide this through the use of a candidates “standing” in the electoral race. The use of easy to read percentages, bar graphs, and colors add to the cognitive saving heuristic of viability. This heuristic is used often early in the political race when there are more candidates. In this way voters are able to see who is winning and who is losing, sometimes severely, and quickly make the decision, say, not to vote for the guy with 3.2%. 

       The final heuristic Lau & Redlawsk argue is the candidate appearance heuristic. This is of utmost importance in voter decision because it is not restricted to anything but visual imagery. The voter can make a decision based off a single picture, because of all the information it provides, i.e. gender, race, age, and “likeableness,” which is reinforced by societal stereotypes. Voters who know nothing about politics can use this to make a decision, accurate or not. Some political scientists refer to this heuristic as the “have-a-beer” heuristic: in which the candidate seems like someone you’d want to have a beer with, which often locks in your vote. An example of this was President Obama’s famous beer summit in 2009. 

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[i] Carpini, Michael. What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven: Yale UP, 1996. Print.

[ii] Philip E. Converse (2006) The nature of belief systems in mass publics (1964), Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society, 18:1-3, 1-74,

[iii] Advantages and Disadvantages of Cognitive Heuristics in Political Decision Making

Richard R. Lau and David P. Redlawsk

American Journal of Political Science , Vol. 45, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), pp. 951-971

Creative Fixation. A guest post by Nicholas Imlach

            The notion of thinking outside of the box has always interested me; I just feel it is under utilized. Going through the public school system feeling like nothing more than a drone monotonously going through the motions has me thinking something needs to change. Always being told you must do what you’re told, becoming fixated on a schedule, following the instructions and rarely asking why.

            When I was in high school I remember watching an episode of “Two and a Half Men.” The episode was based on Pavlov’s conditioning. At the time I didn’t realize the implication of the episode, so after I ended up google-ing Ivan Pavlov and was astonished at what I found. The basics to one of Pavlov’s conditioning experiments went like this: Pavlov had some dogs, he would ring a bell known as a neutral stimulus (NS) and apply an unconditioned stimulus (US), the US being food. When Pavlov gave the dogs the food they would salivate; the dogs would only salivate in the presence of the food. After a while of pairing the bell (NS) with the food (US), the bell became another entity in itself, known as a conditioned stimulus or (CS). When the bell became a CS the dogs would salivate by just hearing the bell, without any food being presented.

            After watching the episode I realized that seemed like the basis of high school to me. My school had two bells per class; the first meant you should be in your seats the second was move to the next class. The bell acted as a NS at first, but upon learning about the class or teacher the bell would become a CS, inciting emotion whether good or bad depending on the class. There was always one bell of the day that would incite a rousing interest by most of the students, that being the lunch bell. Upon realizing the parallels, my interest of psychology rose immensely.

            I tell this story as a basis for my point of thinking outside of the box being under utilized. Realizing that for those four years of school I could boil them down to nothing more than reacting to conditioned instructions made me think school may not be the best at growing creativity. The only real things I learned in school were to follow instructions, and don’t ask questions about why you had to follow the instructions. I had become fixated, I suppose, on following directions. I found myself being confused when asked the question “do you have any questions” not in terms of clarification, but whether or not I thought the material is true or not.

            For the past 15 years (before college) it always seemed implied that whatever the teacher said should be taken as fact. Being asked in multiple classes my opinion on whether I believe the material to be true, or more true than false, it took some work to extinguish the conditioning public school imposed on me. Using top-down processing and the video shown in this week’s class about creativity and how people tend to enjoy creative problem solving I wonder why it is not used more in the public school system. The other morning I saw my neighbors kids going to the bus stop, I said hello, asked what’s up, they looked at me like they were going to jail and said “going to school” in unison, in a voice that sounded like they were actually going to jail. I couldn’t help but say, “I know what you mean.” I understand we are not always going to be able to do what we want, but looking at school from both sides, how can teachers feel good about what they’re doing if a majority of their students are miserable and uninterested?

One last side note: playing call of duty the other day, in the game the player can create a picture to link with their name on the game. Someone started laughing and said look at so and so’s picture. The person used SCHOOL as an acronym and next to it said:

Seven

Crappy

Hours

Of

Our

Lives

I wonder if two polls were taken, one for adults and one for kids, what would be higher: the adults’ approval rating of congress or the kids’ approval rating of school?

All of the effort. A guest post by Nkechinyelu Agulefo,

To me, the effort heuristic is the most interesting heuristic of them all.  The effort heuristic is when the value of an object is judged based on the amount of effort that went into the production of the object.  In other words, if someone puts a great amount of effort into something, that person is more prone to believe the outcome should yield great results. A real life example is when I submitted my final biology lab last semester. I put so much effort into those ten pages and expected to get an A.  I spent hours on the lab report and even went as far as citing five more than the required sources which is so unlike me because I’m not an overachiever. 

(Me during the writing process.)

Long story short I got an A- and I didn't understand why.  I was devastated.  I met with the TA and pleaded my case but she didn't change my grade. I even bought her coffee with my River Hawk Dollars and at the end of my appeal she told me “thanks for the coffee but I’m not giving you an A.”  

 This is where the effort heuristic came into play.  I genuinely thought I deserved an A because of the amount of labor I put in; meanwhile my TA most likely didn’t think the same.

  Here’s another instance where the effort heuristic comes into play. If I visited an art exhibit and they showed me a painting that was made by a twelve year old and asked me to guess the price, I would probably say, “free.”  However, if they told me that that same painting was made by Jean-Michel Basquiat and asked me to guess the price I would say “four years’ worth of my tuition.” I mean it’s Basquiat, this guy is well known and has made paintings in Armani suits.  Even though the paintings are both unique and not very different, to me at least, I would definitely overestimate the price of Basquiat's painting and underestimate the price of the 12 year-old’s painting.

                                        12 year old Megrelishvili Tata's painting

VS.

JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT

Another example of the effort heuristic is if someone was to give me $200, I would spend it without caring because it was effortlessly given to me and everybody knows free money is the best money. However, if it were to come out of my paycheck then I would definitely be more cautious while spending it.  In this case the worth of the money changed when it was coming out of my pocket as opposed to when it was given to me with no strings attached. Those are the basics of effort heuristics and I know for a fact it will continue to occur in the future, I am human after all.

Justin Kruger, Derrick Wirtz, Leaf Van Boven, T.William Altermatt, The effort heuristic, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 40, Issue 1, January 2004, Pages 91-98, ISSN 0022-1031,http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1031(03)00065-9.

Do You Really Know Yourself?

                We are often told that we must know ourselves, love ourselves, before anyone can reciprocate. This idea of knowing oneself stems as far back as Socrates, but that does not make it any less relevant to today. Self-knowledge has been a concept far longer than I’m sure many of us may have guessed. Freud was known to openly argue the concept, believing that it was limited and biased (and obviously that psychoanalysis was necessary for true insight – because that isn’t biased). Nowadays, you can take high school and college courses on self-knowledge, you likely are someone or know someone who purchased a self-help book or one of those ten-step programs “guaranteed” to help you know yourself.

                So clearly self-knowledge is important, but it is also very difficult to grasp – to truly have. However, self-knowledge is crucial because self-deception is so easy. Carl Jung is quoted regarding self-knowledge saying, “there is no coming to [self] consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” We cannot truly understand ourselves – have full, genuine self-knowledge – if we refuse to recognize both the good and bad parts of ourselves.

                Self-knowledge is also compiled of different forms, different “selves.” The ecological self is the self as perceived within the immediate physical environment. The interpersonal self stems from communication. The extended self has its foundations in memory and anticipation. The private self is acknowledged as we eventually realize our conscious experiences are our own, exclusively. Our conceptual self draws on social assumptions and theories regarding human nature in general (though especially ourselves). Ulric Neisser argued these different types of knowledge in a 2008 publication. Neisser also argued that we rarely differentiate between these different selves – we rarely experience them as distinct because “they are held together by specific forms of stimulus information.” What I thought was more interesting, however, was Neisser’s argument that these different selves differ in developmental histories, the accuracy with which we can know them, what they contribute to our overall human experience, and even what pathologies they are subject to.

              Do I think I am in touch with all of these different selves? Not anymore. I definitely had the assumption that I knew myself very well before, and even when I started this post. Now I’m not nearly as sure. Am I going to run to Barnes and Noble to purchase a self-help ten-step self-knowledge book? Not quite yet, but I’m getting closer as I keep writing. I guess we can try to evaluate this and get a little personal tonight. So, as I’m sitting in my living room typing this I suppose my ecological self is my perception of myself as a worn-out, slightly overwhelmed college student ready for a mini vacation. My interpersonal self is only communicating via text message and I’m merely being reminded that I’m sick and alone.. I suppose my interpersonal self is not too pleased currently (sorry about that interpersonal self, I’ll find some better people to text next time). My extended self is anticipating the vacation well remaining firmly stuck in my memories of Thanksgivings past, increasing my anticipation of this year’s, as well as the semester thus far and what I must remember is to come. Perhaps I’m not quite in touch with my private self yet, however my conceptual self is definitely rooted in the stigmas, stereotypes, and obligations of being a college student.

                Did I evaluate that correctly? I think so, but I’m not 100% sure, I am just an undergraduate student after all. It was fun though, you should try it; though it was definitely odd to separate them. I hope you feel like you learned something from this post, though not quite up to the standards of a ten-step book.

Five kinds of self-knowledge (Neisser)

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a superhuman!

This blog post is going to be dedicated to those who defy the norms:

     Shakuntala Devi was acknowledged in the 1982 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. Devi was able to multiply two 13 digit numbers and recite the 26 digit response in just 28 seconds. There have been many "human calculators" down the line, and nowadays they are even tested in the annual Human Calculation World Cup. Participants include world-record-breakers, math teachers, motivational speakers, etc. Many of them have authored books in attempts to improve math skills among children or to even make math fun (I took AP Calculus - math is not fun). Mike Byster is one of the fastest mathematical minds in the world, but he is a former stock broker turned math teacher and creator of Brainetics (it's for kids, to help the math-shy; it sounds neat though). However, if you simply google "human calculator," and not on Shakuntala Devi's birthday, Scott Flansburg is the top result. Flansburg is the Guinness World Record holder for fastest human calculator, and even serves as the global ambassador for World Maths Day (which I had no idea existed, but pi day is on March 14th!).
      If you ever find yourself looking for a show to watch late at night, perhaps check out Stan Lee's Superhumans, where they literally search for people alleged to defy the norms (and represent a reality for superheroes in even the slightest of ways). However, I have searched through the main bios from the show in the attempt to find the most relevant superhumans - those concerned with the brain. Eskil Ronningsbakken is alleged to have the ability to TURN OFF fear - I'm sorry, what?? Yes. This superhuman takes on super balance at super heights and seems to have the ability to turn off the brain's innate reactions (fight or flight response - FLEE! FLEE FROM THE DEADLY HEIGHTS!). Juan Ruiz has been blind since birth, but is allegedly capable of visualizing the world through a form of sonar similar to echolocation, like bats and dolphins. Derek Paravicini, a.k.a. the human jukebox, is both blind and autistic and is also capable of remembering AND accurately replaying any song he has ever heard and ever hears. Although some of the other "superhumans" were interesting and their defiance of physical norms I'm sure requires cognitive factors, these were the most relevant. Honestly though, it's all so strange, interesting, and compelling at the same time. Do you think these things are possible? Are superhumans real? How?
        I honestly can't answer those questions for you, it's entirely a matter of opinion. I'm sure there are genetic and neurological components behind these superhumans, but I cannot give you the details. Can people train for these abilities? If I give my child Flansburg's book and Byster's Brainetics, can I raise my child as a human calculator? There are so many unanswered questions (some more realistic than others obviously), but I couldn't help but address this topic. My uncle has an absurd memory - he can remember crime scenes from years ago: dates, suspects, details, evidence, etc. without even looking at the case file. I grew up thinking he had some sort of superhuman, above average, photographic memory of sorts (although now we know photographic memories aren't real). Nonetheless, I've always wanted an explanation. I've always been curious and I've always wanted to learn how he did it so that I could have a memory like that too.

Let me know your thoughts! Do you know any superhumans?