Mar 15, 2020 07:24 PM
(This post was last modified: Mar 15, 2020 07:25 PM by C C.)
http://nautil.us/blog/-the-problem-with-...udy-reason
EXCERPT: Last year, I was in Paris for the International Convention of Psychological Science, one of the most prestigious gatherings in cognitive science. I listened to talks from my field, human reasoning, but I also enjoyed those on ethology, because I find studies on non-human animals, from turtles to parrots, fascinating.
Despite their typically small sample sizes, I found the scientific reasoning in the animal-studies talks sounder, and their explanations richer, than the work I heard on human reasoning. The reason is simple: Ethologists evaluate their experimental paradigm, or set-up, in light of its ecological validity, or how well it matches natural surroundings. An animal’s true habitat, and its evolutionary history, have always centered the discussion...
[...] Perhaps the ultimate tool psychologists use to study reasoning is the syllogism: For example, “Major premise: All men are animals. Minor premise: Some animals are aggressive. Conclusion: Some men are aggressive.” (Does this conclusion follow?)
As I listened to talks relying on these methods, I wondered: Do people think like that in everyday life? Probably not. Did our Pleistocene ancestors? Very unlikely. Then, how should I interpret these results? Is using abstract logic on humans like asking a turtle to climb stairs?
Nikolaas Tinbergen, the founder of behavioral ecology, famously stated that ethology is the art of interviewing animals in their own language. This principle is simple but powerful. And there is no reason why it should not be applied to humans. [...] Humans are ... too familiar with one another. Fundamental laws of biology, like evolution by natural selection, are falsely believed to have weak constraints on human psychology—particularly for high-level cognitive functions, like reasoning. But the human brain, just like the turtle brain, has been shaped by millions of years of evolution. Reason is unlikely to have escaped its influence.
What does it mean, then, to interview humans in their own language? [...] Let’s take a concrete example. One of the most discussed tasks in the psychology of reasoning is the Wason selection task, named after English psychologist Peter Wason: “Each card has a number on one side, and a patch of color on the other. Which card or cards must be turned over to test the idea that if a card shows an even number on one face, then its opposite face is red?”
Most of us will turn 8 and the red card (even though this one is useless), neglecting the orange card that could falsify the rule (if, on its opposite face, we found an even number). Humans are very bad at this task. But what happens when we use ecological stimuli? Psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby created a social version of the Wason selection task: “Each card has an age on one side, and a drink on the other. Which card(s) must be turned over to test the idea that if you are drinking alcohol then you must be over 18?”
If you are like most participants, it now seems obvious that you need to flip the beer and the 16 cards. You solved the problem effortlessly even though the task is, logically, the same as before. Our big brains likely evolved to solve tasks related to social interactions, not abstract logical problems. The Cosmides-Tooby selection task was ecologically valid; the first one wasn’t. Using the wrong experimental design, whether it’s the task itself or the stimuli, exposes researchers to many problems—the main one being that the results become hard to interpret. You don’t know if what you found reveals an interesting feature of the human mind—such as that human deductive reasoning is biased in the classical Wason selection task—or if it’s just a methodological artifact because the stimuli were not ecological.
This is why it is important, when analyzing a biological mechanism, to consider an animal’s evolutionary history—the environment in which its ancestors evolved, and the recurrent problems they had to solve. Four broad questions can be answered: “How does it work?”; “How does it develop?”; “Why does it work like that?”; and “How did it develop in the course of evolution?” The first two questions offer proximate explanations, whereas the two last questions offer ultimate explanations... (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: Last year, I was in Paris for the International Convention of Psychological Science, one of the most prestigious gatherings in cognitive science. I listened to talks from my field, human reasoning, but I also enjoyed those on ethology, because I find studies on non-human animals, from turtles to parrots, fascinating.
Despite their typically small sample sizes, I found the scientific reasoning in the animal-studies talks sounder, and their explanations richer, than the work I heard on human reasoning. The reason is simple: Ethologists evaluate their experimental paradigm, or set-up, in light of its ecological validity, or how well it matches natural surroundings. An animal’s true habitat, and its evolutionary history, have always centered the discussion...
[...] Perhaps the ultimate tool psychologists use to study reasoning is the syllogism: For example, “Major premise: All men are animals. Minor premise: Some animals are aggressive. Conclusion: Some men are aggressive.” (Does this conclusion follow?)
As I listened to talks relying on these methods, I wondered: Do people think like that in everyday life? Probably not. Did our Pleistocene ancestors? Very unlikely. Then, how should I interpret these results? Is using abstract logic on humans like asking a turtle to climb stairs?
Nikolaas Tinbergen, the founder of behavioral ecology, famously stated that ethology is the art of interviewing animals in their own language. This principle is simple but powerful. And there is no reason why it should not be applied to humans. [...] Humans are ... too familiar with one another. Fundamental laws of biology, like evolution by natural selection, are falsely believed to have weak constraints on human psychology—particularly for high-level cognitive functions, like reasoning. But the human brain, just like the turtle brain, has been shaped by millions of years of evolution. Reason is unlikely to have escaped its influence.
What does it mean, then, to interview humans in their own language? [...] Let’s take a concrete example. One of the most discussed tasks in the psychology of reasoning is the Wason selection task, named after English psychologist Peter Wason: “Each card has a number on one side, and a patch of color on the other. Which card or cards must be turned over to test the idea that if a card shows an even number on one face, then its opposite face is red?”
Most of us will turn 8 and the red card (even though this one is useless), neglecting the orange card that could falsify the rule (if, on its opposite face, we found an even number). Humans are very bad at this task. But what happens when we use ecological stimuli? Psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby created a social version of the Wason selection task: “Each card has an age on one side, and a drink on the other. Which card(s) must be turned over to test the idea that if you are drinking alcohol then you must be over 18?”
If you are like most participants, it now seems obvious that you need to flip the beer and the 16 cards. You solved the problem effortlessly even though the task is, logically, the same as before. Our big brains likely evolved to solve tasks related to social interactions, not abstract logical problems. The Cosmides-Tooby selection task was ecologically valid; the first one wasn’t. Using the wrong experimental design, whether it’s the task itself or the stimuli, exposes researchers to many problems—the main one being that the results become hard to interpret. You don’t know if what you found reveals an interesting feature of the human mind—such as that human deductive reasoning is biased in the classical Wason selection task—or if it’s just a methodological artifact because the stimuli were not ecological.
This is why it is important, when analyzing a biological mechanism, to consider an animal’s evolutionary history—the environment in which its ancestors evolved, and the recurrent problems they had to solve. Four broad questions can be answered: “How does it work?”; “How does it develop?”; “Why does it work like that?”; and “How did it develop in the course of evolution?” The first two questions offer proximate explanations, whereas the two last questions offer ultimate explanations... (MORE - details)