Name: 認知。你的心智如何讓你驚訝和背叛--心理學速成班#15 (Cognition: How Your Mind Can Amaze and Betray You - Crash Course Psychology #15)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:09:02.000Z
Duration: 10 min 42 s
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Why do conspiracy theorists think that we didn’t land on the moon or that Hillary

And why won’t Bernice admit that the new Superman movie just isn’t very good?

We’ve talked about cognition before. We usually refer to it as the process that we

use to think and solve crossword puzzles and stuff. But really, cognition involves knowing,

remembering, understanding, communicating, and to a certain extent, learning.

And as truly wonderful as our brains are, we can be spectacularly bad at ALL of these

We used to think our cognition worked like a computer -- logically processing information.

But that cabbage-sized chunk of pink, wet brain matter in your skull can do a lot more

than math, and the things that it does are certainly not always logical.

Many experts argue that it’s cognition that makes us truly human, and that everything

that comes with it -- our preferences, prejudices, fears, and intuitions -- are what make us

We’re not the only animals that show some evidence of cognition, of course: Chimps and

gorillas exhibit insight and planning; crows use tools; elephants teach each other.

But our capacity as humans to figure stuff out is matched only by our ability to totally

misjudge stuff. As prone as we are to brilliance and insight, we’re equally likely to succumb

to irrational thinking and false intuition.

So, to borrow a riff from Rene Descartes, you think, therefore you are.

Which means you’re brilliant a lot of the time. And sometimes, you’re just going to

We all want to make sense of the world. And one of the major ways our cognition allows

us do that is by forming concepts -- mental groupings of similar objects, people, ideas,

or events. We like to lump things together.

Concepts simplify our thinking in such a fundamental way that we usually don’t have to stop and

think about using them, they’re just there.

And yet without concepts, we’d need a unique name for everything. You couldn’t just ask

me to shake the anglerfish -- because there’d be no concept of shake or fish, let alone

And if I told you I was devastated that I lost my anglerfish -- which I probably would

be -- I’d also have to explain my emotions, their intensities, even the words themselves

So basically, without concepts, no one would ever get anything done. We’d all be like

a bunch of ents taking all morning to say “Hey, what’s up?”

We often organize our concepts by forming prototypes--mental images or pinnacle examples

For example, if I say “bird”--the general shape of a songbird probably pops into your

head before like, a penguin or chicken or emu, because robins and cardinals more closely

resemble our bird prototype. Still, if I show you a picture of some crazy

creature you’ve never seen before, and you note that it has feathers and a beak, you’ll

probably file it under the bird category because it more closely resembles your concept of

bird than your concept of rodent or overcoat or footstool.

Concepts and prototypes speed up our thinking, but they also can box in our thinking, and

lead to prejudice if we see something that doesn’t fit our prototypes.

A hundred years ago the sight of a female doctor might have caused some heads to explode,

because in peoples’ tiny minds, the prototypes of “doctor” and “woman” didn’t have

any overlap. And actually some people today still feel that way. Haters gonna hate.

So it’s important to actively keep your mind open mind to make room for evolving concepts,

and remember that concepts may sometimes hurt as much as they help.

One of the biggest ways our cognition works to our benefit, though, is through our ability

to solve problems. We use our problem-solving skills all the

time: How to assemble Scandinavian furniture, bake muffins with a missing ingredient, or

handle the crushing disappointment of the new Superman movie.

And we approach problem-solving in different ways -- sometimes we value speed; other times,

Some problems we figure out using trial and error--you know, you try something and if

it doesn’t work, try it a different way, and keep at it until something works. Trial

and error is slow and deliberate--which may be good or bad, depending on the problem.

We can also use algorithms and heuristics to come up with solutions.

Algorithms are logical, methodical, step-by-step procedures that guarantee an eventual solution,

though they may be slow to work through. Heuristics, on the other hand, are more like

mental shortcuts -- simple strategies that allow us to solve problems faster, although

they’re more error-prone than algorithms. Say you’re at the store, looking for a family-sized

bottle of Sriracha. You could use an algorithm and methodically check every shelf and aisle

in the store. Or you could use heuristics and first search the Asian or condiment sections--the

places that make the most sense based on what you already know.

Heuristics may be way faster, but the algorithmic approach guarantees you won’t overlook the

sauce along the way, because they stuck it in the deli or whatever dumb thing they did

So algorithms, heuristics, and trial-and-error are problem-solving strategies that involve

a plan of attack. But sometimes we get lucky while puzzling

out a problem, and Aha!, out of nowhere a sudden flash of insight that solves our problem.

I’ll use orange in the muffin recipe instead of lemon! Or, Sriracha lives in the Mexican

section! For some reason! Neuroscientists have actually watched that

kind of sudden, happy brain flash on neuroimaging screens.

In one experiment, they gave subjects a problem to solve:

What word can be added to the three words CRAB, PINE, and SAUCE to create a new compound

word? Then they asked the subjects to press a button

While the subjects thought about it, scans showed activity in their frontal lobes, the

areas involved in the focused attention of typical problem-solving.

But right at the Aha! moment, just as they pushed the button, there was a clear burst

of activity just above the ear in the right temporal lobe, which, among many other things,

The answer, by the way, we already gave you the hint earlier in the episode.

Where’s my fish? Those sudden bursts of insight are awesome,

but you can’t count on them to solve all your problems. And just because something

feels, doesn’t mean it’s truly correct. Because as inventive and smartypants as we

may be, our cognition often leads us astray in all kinds of ways.

For instance, we often look for, and favor, evidence that verifies our ideas, while we’re

more likely to avoid or ignore contradictory evidence -- a tendency known as confirmation

bias. This is really similar to the overconfidence we’ve talked about, when you’re basically

more confident than you are correct. When this kind of cognitive bias takes hold,

you might cling to your initial conceptions in a kind of belief perseverance, even in

the face of clear proof to the contrary. This happens all the time, and it can be maddening

for people watching it happen. People still think that the earth is flat! It’s like...WHAT?

HOW? There’s space pictures! I probably don’t need to tell you -- people