What effect does use of automatic versus controlled thinking have on the quality of our reasoning? Overall, how good are people as social thinkers?

What will be an ideal response?


Answer: Both automatic and controlled thinking are likely to lead to reasonably correct answers for the most part. In automatic thinking, people use simpler strategies; in controlled thinking, people use more sophisticated reasoning and are more likely to notice when facts conflict with their existing schemas. Thus people are more likely to be accurate when they use controlled rather than automatic thinking. However, controlled thinking is not a cure-all for faulty reasoning; people can still make errors because they are overly anxious and thus unable to process information efficiently, because their assumptions are faulty, or because they do not know how to reason correctly despite their desire to do so. Thus both kinds of thinking can also lead to consequential errors.

Psychology

You might also like to view...

Reacting to a stimulus that is similar to the one you have learned to react to is called __________.

A. stimulus generalization B. response generalization C. higher-order conditioning D. modeling

Psychology

Recent research has shown that ADHD is a disorder promoted by pharmaceutical companies and limited to Western countries

Indicate whether the statement is true or false

Psychology

Rick is about to be married. He knows he is doing the right thing, but he is very anxious about meeting his fiancée's parents and about his ability to be a good husband. This stress has been continuing for a while. If Rick experiences the third stage of Selye's general adaptation syndrome, what may happen on his honeymoon?

A. Rick may experience a great emotional release. B. Rick may get physically ill. C. Rick may take out his pent-up frustrations on his new bride. D. Rick may realize that all his anxiety was foolish and relax.

Psychology

One reason that psychologists abandoned the view of instinct as a universal explanation of human behavior is that

a. Freud's popular theory rejected the importance of instinct. b. there had been little success in generating a list of human instincts. c. the behaviorist influence began to diminish in the 1920s. d. cross-cultural studies found enormous behavioral variation.

Psychology