Сборник текстов по психологии для чтения на английском языке с упражнениями Г.В. Бочарова, М.Г. Степанова

In addition to these search processes, there is a process of inference, or use of evidence, in which each possibility is strengthened or weakened as a choice on the basis of the evidence, in the light of the goals. Goals determine the way in which evidence is used. For example, the evidence about work load would be irrelevant if having a manageable work load were not a goal. The importance of that goal, which seems to be high, affects the importance of that evidence, which seems to be great.

The objects of thinking are represented in our minds. We are conscious of them. If they are not in our intermediate consciousness, we can recall them when they are relevant, even after an episode of thinking resumes following an interruption. The process of thinking — the search for possibilities, evidence, and goals and the use of the evidence to evaluate possibilities — do not occur in any fixed order. They overlap. The thinker alternates from one to another.

Why just these phases: the search for possibilities, evidence, and goals, and the use of evidence? Thinking is, in its most general sense, a method of finding and choosing among the potential possibilities, that is, possible actions, beliefs, or personal goals. For any choice, there must be purposes or goals, and goals can be added to or removed from the list. I can search for (or be open to) new goals; therefore, search for goals is always possible. There must also be objects that can be brought to bear on the choice among possibilities. Hence, there must be evidence, and it can always be sought. Finally, the evidence must be used, or it might as well not have been gathered. These phases are “necessary” in this case.

The term judgment will be important in this book. By judgment, I mean the evaluation of one or more possibilities with respect to a specific set of evidence and goals. In decision making, we can judge whether to take an option or not, or we can judge its desirability relative to other options. In belief formation, we can judge whether to accept the belief as a basis for action, or we can judge the probability that the belief is true. In thinking about personal goals, we can judge whether or not to adopt a goal, or we can judge how strong it should be relative to other goals. The term “judgment”, therefore, refers to the process of inference.

Let us review the main elements of thinking, using another example of decision making, the practical matter of looking for an apartment.

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“Possibilities” are possible answers to the question that inspired the thinking: Here, they are possible apartments. Possibilities (like goals and evidence) can be in mind before thinking begins. You may already have seen one apartment you like before you even think about moving. Or possibilities can be added, as a result of active search (through the newspaper) or suggestions from outside (tips from friends).

Goals are criteria for evaluating possibilities. In the apartment hunting example, goals include factors such as rent, distance from work or school, safety, and design quality. The goals determine what evidence is sought and how it is used. It is not until you think that safety might be relevant that you begin to inquire about building security or the safety of the neighborhood. When we search for goals, we ask, “What should I be trying to do?” or “What is my purpose in doing this?” Can you think of other criteria for apartments aside from those listed? In doing so, you are searching for goals. We often have a subgoal, a goal whose achievement will help us achieve some other goal. In this example, “good locks” would be a subgoal for “safety.” Each possibility has what I shall call its strength, which represents the extent to which it is judged by the thinker to satisfy the goals. In decision making, the strength of a possibility corresponds to its overall desirability as an act, taking into account all the goals that the decision maker has in mind.

Evidence is sought — or makes itself available. Evidence can consist of simple propositions such as “The rent is $300 a month,” or it can consist of arguments, imagined scenarios, or examples. One possibility can serve as evidence against another, as when we challenge a scientific hypothesis by giving an alternative and incompatible explanation of the data. Briggs and Krantz found that subjects can judge the weight of each piece of evidence independently of other pieces.

Each piece of evidence has what I call a weight with respect to a given possibility and set of goals. The weight of a given piece of evidence determines how much it should strengthen or weaken the possibility as a means of achieving the goals. The weight of the evidence by itself does not determine how much the strength of a possibility is revised as the possibility is evaluated; the thinker controls this revision. Therefore a thinker can err by revising the strength of a possibility too much or too little.

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The use of the evidence to revise (or not revise) strengths of possibilities is the end result of all of these search processes. This phase is also called inference. It is apparent that inference is not all of thinking, although it is a crucial part.

The relationship among the elements of thinking is illustrated in the following diagram:

The evidence (E) affects the strengths of the possibilities (P), but the weight of the evidence is affected by the goals (G). Different goals can even reverse the weight of a piece of evidence. For example, if I want to buy a car and am trying to decide between two different ones (possibilities), and one of the cars is big and heavy (evidence), my concern with safety (a goal) might make the size a virtue (positive weight), but my concern with mileage (another goal) might make the size a detriment (negative weight).

I. Choose the word from the box to match the definition on the left.

1. It is a choice of action — of what ______________________

to do or not do. It is based on beliefs about what actions will achieve the goals.

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II.Answer the questions to the text.

1.What are the main characteristics of thinking?

2.What is thinking in its most general sense?

3.Which process does the term “judgment” refer to?

4.What do the goals determine?

5.What does a subgoal mean?

6.What can evidence consist of?

7.What is the end result of the search process?

8.What is the relationship among the elements of thinking?

III.Choose the facts to prove that:

1.We search for certain objects and then we make inferences from and about them.

2.We search for three kinds of objects — possibilities, evidence and goals.

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T e x t 16

CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING

People who are most successful at solving problems often are those who have many different sets at their disposal, and are able to represent the problem correctly and hence judge when to change sets or even to give up sets entirely. Simply put, they deal with problems creatively.

Many problems, of course, do not lend themselves to straightfor ward strategies but rely more on the use of flexible and creative thinking. The most famous example of creative problem solving comes from ancient Greece. The king asked the mathematician Archimedes (287— 212 B.C.) whether his crown was made of pure gold or had been adulterated with silver. Archimedes knew that an ounce of gold weighs more than an ounce of silver, but he did not know how to calculate the volume of a complicated object such as a crown. He worked on the problem day after day, but got nowhere. Then, one afternoon, he noticed that when he got into his bath, the water flowed over the edge of the tub. Suddenly he realized that he could calculate the volume of the crown by placing it in a basin of water and measuring how much water is displaced. Overjoyed by his sudden insight, he jumped out of his bath and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting “Eureka! I have found it.”

Centuries later, artists in France became dissatisfied with the representational painting of the day and puzzled over a better way to capture visual experience. One day they noticed that as the sun moves across the sky, the light on a haystack changes. Here was the solution! Instead of painting the haystack, they could paint the light. And so the Impressionist school of painting was born. The idea that light itself could be the subject of a painting had never occurred to their elders.

Creative solutions are not limited to science and art. What is smaller, more portable, and far less expensive than a bicycle; easier to navigate than a skateboard; does not require the strength and coordination of in line skates; can be mounted or dismounted in a flash; provides recreation or transportation; and boasts a high tech, urban image? The answer is a scooter, the fad that swept the country in 2000.

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Convergent and Divergent Thinking

How many unusual uses can you think of for a brick? It’s easy to think of a few good uses but quite another task to come up with 50 or 60 distinct ones. Psychologists sometimes refer to this type of thinking as divergent thinking, in contrast to convergent thinking. A problem requiring convergent thinking has only one solution or a very few — for a example, a math problem. In such a case, the best approach is to examine the available facts, decide which are relevant, and look for a single, logical solution. By contrast, problems that have no single correct solution and that require a flexible, inventive approach call for divergent thinking — looking at the facts and expanding on them, imaging where different pieces of information might lead, and producing a number of possible solutions. Imagine, for example, that three hikers are lost in the woods. One argues that the only solution is to find their way back to the trail and uses a stick to begin sketching a rough map in the dirt. The second argues that the only solution is to find their way to the lake, which lies to the west, and begins fiddling with his compass. The third hiker — a divergent thinker — quietly gazes around, “letting his mind go.” Looking at the position of the sun, he decides they would not be able to make it to the lake before nightfall. He considers camping by the nearest stream, wonders if rangers conduct patrols, thinks about how they might send up a signal, and then finds himself staring at a tree. Suddenly he realizes that if he climbs the tree, he might find out where they are.

The Creative Process

Because creative problem solving requires thinking up new and original ideas, the process is not always aided by planning and the deliberate use of problem solving strategies. Solutions to many problems rely on insight, a seemingly arbitrary flash “out of the blue” that solves a problem. Many of us have had the experience of suddenly seeing the way to a solution that previously had seemed all but impossible. Henri Poincare, the French mathematician, described his discovery of a new set of geometric principles this way:

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I was very ignorant; every day I seated myself at my work table, stayed an hour or two, tried a great number of combinations and reached no results…. One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and could not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds. I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination. By the next morning I had established the existence of a new class of Fuschian functions.

Poincare, 1924

Many people have provided strikingly similar accounts of their own processes of creative thinking. Drawing on heuristics, algorithms, and the expertise, they simply cannot come up with the solution to their problem. Then, as if by magic, the solution suddenly “pops into their heads,” often after they’ve stopped working on the problem for a while. Therefore, if you simply cannot arrive at a solution to a problem after careful preparation and step by step efforts at problem solving, try to stop thinking about the problem for a while and return to it later, approaching it from a new angle. Sometimes you get so enmeshed in the details of a problem that you lose sight of the obvious. Taking a rest from a problem may allow you to discover a fresh approach.

Another creative strategy is to redefine the problem. It is easy to look at problems just as they are presented to us — to assume, for example, that we cannot work in more than two dimensions when solving the kitchen match problem. For example, if your business is losing money, you might sit down to figure out how to cut costs. But by defining the solution narrowly as cost cutting, you have ruled out the possibility that the best way to stop losing money might be to figure out creative ways to increase income rather than to cut costs. Thus, a better representation of this problem would be to discover ways to cut costs or increase income or both.

These examples demonstrate the importance of developing a questioning attitude toward problems. Ask yourself, “What is the real problem here?” “Can the problem be interpreted in other ways?” By redefining the problem, you may find that you have opened up new avenues to creative solutions. And try to maintain an uncritical attitude toward potential solutions: Don’t reject a potential solution because at first it seems not to be ideal for that problem. On closer examination,

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the solution may turn out to be effective, or it may suggest similar solutions that would work. That is the rationale behind the technique called brainstorming. When solving a problem, generate lots of ideas without evaluating them prematurely. Only after lots of ideas have been collected should you review and evaluate them.

I. Choose the word from the box to match the definition on the left.

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accomplished as intermediate steps towards ultimately reaching

the final goal.

II.Answer the questions to the text.

1.Where does the most famous example of creative problem solving come from?

2.Are creative solutions limited only to science and art?

3.What do psychologists mean by convergent thinking?

4.What is divergent thinking?

5.What do solutions to many problems rely on?

6.Why is the creative process not always aided by planning and the deliberate use of problem solving strategies?

7.What should you do if you simply cannot arrive at a solution to a problem after careful preparation?

8.What another creative strategy is known to you?

9.How can brainstorming be defined?

III.Choose the facts to prove that:

1.Many problems rely more on the use of flexible and creative thinking.

2.A problem requiring convergent thinking has only one solution or a very few.

3.Solutions to many problems rely on insight.

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T e x t 17

TOUCHING ILLUSIONS

Humans, like all primates, are highly visual creatures. Most of the back of the brain is devoted to visual processing, and half of the cortex is involved with sight. In addition, when visual inputs conflict with clues from other senses, vision tends to dominate. This supremacy is why, for example, ventriloquists are so compelling. We see the dummy talking, and we are fooled into hearing the voice coming from it — a case of what scientists call “visual capture.” (With eyes closed, however, we can correctly localize the dummy voice to the ventriloquist.)

If information from vision and touch is incompatible, visual dominance may cause us to actually feel things differently than if we relied only on touch (without looking).

Curved Touch

In a simple but striking demonstration by James Gibson in the 1930s, a subject is first presented with a short straight metal rod and asked to feel it with his eyes closed. Of course, he correctly feels it is straight. He then lets go of the rod and is asked to open his eyes and look down at it. Unbeknownst to him, it is the same rod but viewed through a wedge prism, which causes the rod to appear curved rather than straight. Not surprisingly, he now reports seeing a curved rod. But what happens when he reaches out and touches the rod while looking at it? Subjects reported nothing unusual: they noticed no rivalry, instability or averaging between the senses; the rod that they saw as curved they simply also felt as curved.

In short, vision redirects the tactile perception so that no conflict is experienced. Similarly, the late Irvin Rock of the University of California, Berkerly, showed that when shape or size perception for single simple objects was made to conflict between the senses (by the introduction of distorting lenses), perception conveyed by active touch was modified to conform to visual perception.

Yet another example of vision influencing touch occurs in patients with phantom limbs. After amputation of an arm, the vast majority of

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