Chapter 8
Thinking
&“Intelligence”
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Judging and Making Decisions
Confirmation Bias
Hindsight Bias
Representativeness
Bias
Availability Bias
Ignoring or finding fault
with information that
does not fit our opinions,
and seeking information
with which we agree
Judging and Making Decisions
Confirmation Bias
Hindsight Bias
Representativeness
Bias
Availability Bias
Tendency, after learning
about an event, to
believe that one could
have predicted the
event in advance
“I knew it all along”
phenomenon
(politics, medicine, sports)
Judging and Making Decisions
Confirmation Bias
Hindsight Bias
Representativeness
Bias
Availability Bias
Strategy based on
presumption that, once
a person or event is
categorized, it shares all
features of other
members in that
category
Exaggerating the Improbable
 Availability Heuristic

The tendency to judge the probability of
an event by how easy it is to think of
examples or instances.
(Personal Experiences*)
 September 11 & flying
Intelligence
Define: Intelligence is ____________.
(or) Intelligence is not ____________.
“ability to profit from experience, acquire
knowledge, think abstractly, and adapt to
changes in the environment”
:ability to master information or skills needed
to succeed in your culture
(hypothetical construct)
Danger in Definitions:
Intelligence
“The tendency has always been strong to believe that
whatever received a name must be an entity or being,
having an independent existence of its own. And if no real
entity answering to the name could be found, men did not
for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined
that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious”
~John Stuart Mill
Intelligence
 Very controversial
Steven Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure
Of Man
 Hernstein & Murray's The Bell Curve
 Dangers of reification
 regarding something abstract as a
material or concrete thing is
dangerous!!!

IQ Testing: A Brief History
 Binet-Simon Test
• Why was test created?
• Trial and Error Method
• Binet’s Philosophy
• Intelligence Testing in America
• Terman: IQ
Goddard and Eugenics
 Eugenic Philosophy
 Ellis Island: Goddard’s
Intelligence Classification of
Immigrants of Different
Nationalities (1917)
 83% of all Jews tested were
feeble-minded, as were 80% of
the Hungarians, 79% of the
Italians, and 87% of the
Russians.
 Many immigrants were turned
away and sent back to Europe.
 The Immigration Restriction Act,
passed in 1924 (which remained
in effect until 1965)
World War I




Mass Testing (Alpha vs. Beta)
Army Beta designed for illiterates or people whose
first language was not English
Consisted of mazes, mentally counting blocks,
number-symbol completions
Very bizarre, unfair testing conditions
Calculating IQs “on the Curve”
Normal distribution –
Bell-shaped curve describing the spread of a
characteristic throughout a population
(height, intelligence, aggression, etc.)
Normal range –
the middle two-thirds of a normal distribution
(Mean and SD)
Calculating IQs “on the Curve”
What Are the Components of
Intelligence?
Some psychologists believe
that the essence of
intelligence is a single,
general factor, while others
believe intelligence is best
described as a collection of
distinct abilities
Psychometric Theories of
Intelligence
 Spearman’s G Factor
 Factor Analysis
Cognitive Theories of
Intelligence
 Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory
 Gardner’s Seven (8?) Intelligences
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory
Contextual
Intelligence
Logical Reasoning
Experiential
Intelligence
Ability to cope with
the environment,
“street smarts”
also called tacit
knowledge
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory
Practical
Intelligence
Componential
Intelligence
Experiential
Intelligence
Ability to analyze
problems and find
correct answers,
ability measured by
most IQ tests
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory
Practical
Intelligence
Logical Reasoning
Experiential
Intelligence
Form of intelligence
that helps people see
new relationships
among concepts,
involves insight and
creativity
Gardner’s Seven Intelligences
Linguistic
Logical-Mathematical
Spatial
Musical
Bodily-Kinesthetic
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Other Intelligences?
 Emotional intelligence (EQ)
 The ability to:
 identify your own and other
people’s emotions accurately,
 express your emotions
clearly, and
 regulate emotions in yourself
and others
Bias and IQ Testing
 Cultural-Racial

Expectations

“selling out”

(S.E.S.)
Runner::Marathon as
Envoy::Embasy
Martyr::Massacre
Oarsman::Regatta
Referee::Tournament
Horse::Stable
An Illustration of Stereotype Threat
-Scores are affected by an individual’s expectations (e.g., negative*)
for performance.
(African-Americans, Latinos, low-income people, women, and
elderly people)
Bias and IQ Tests
 Culture Free Tests?
 Gender Bias?
 Should we continue to
use IQ tests?
-Why/Why not?
Motivation and intelligence
 Comparing the 100 most successful men with 100
least successful, researchers found that motivation,
not IQ made the difference.
 Motivation to work hard at intellectual tasks differs as
a function of culture.
 Americans are “worlds” apart from Asians


Attitudes, expectations, and effort (e.g., math skills)
“Complacency, fatalism, and low standards can
prevent people from recognizing what they don’t
know and can reduce the efforts to learn.”