For nearly as long as humans have been thinking about thinking, one of the most intriguing issues has been the interplay of reason and emotion. For the greatest thinkers throughout recorded history, reason has reigned supreme. The traditional paradigm has been one of a dichotomy where refined and uniquely human REASON pitches an ongoing battle …
Read more “What Plato, Descartes, and Kant Got Wrong: Reason Does not Rule.”
What is Intuitive Thought? I have devoted numerous posts to a general category of cognitive errors and biases that are broadly lumped into errors associated with the intuitive mind. The lay notions of intuition are often referred to as gut instincts and they are generally considered emotional and irrational responses. It is in this …
Essentialism within the purview of psychology is a cognitive bias whose roots form in early childhood (Gelman, 2004). This concept pertains to the notion that all discernible objects harbor an underlying reality that although intangible, gives each and every object it’s true identity – it’s essence (Dawkins, 2009; Hood, 2008). To put it another way: …
The more I talk with others about the erroneous inclinations of the intuitive brain the more I face responses that are incredulous, emotional, and sometimes irrational. When it comes to intuition, it seems, people are quite fond of theirs. Rational thought, I am often reminded, elicits annoyance. Ramp up the annoyance when you remind people …
Read more “The Intuitive Cling”
We are innately intuitive thinkers inclined toward making all sorts of cognitive errors as we muddle through our lives. The consequences in many cases are benign enough; however, I dare say that many an interpersonal conflict stems from such thinking. However, the consequences of this type of thinking can be huge in some circumstances. For …
My previous posts addressed several common cognitive biases while briefly touching on their subsequent consequences. In review, the Fundamental Attribution Error leads us to make hasty and often erroneous conclusions about others’ personal attributes based on our superficial observations. Generally such conclusions are in fact erroneous because we lack a sufficient understanding of the situational …
Read more “Global Consequences of Cognitive Biases”