Keith E. Stanovich

the psychology of rational thought

What intelligence tests miss

Responds to the idea that humans are merely survival mechanisms for their own genes, providing the tools to advance human interests over the interests of the replicators through rational self-determination.

Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin

The Robot's Rebellion

Decision making and rationality in the modern world

How to Think Straight about Psychology

Why we don't live in a post-truth society but rather a myside society: what science tells us about the bias that poisons our politics. In The Bias That Divides Us, psychologist Keith Stanovich argues provocatively that we don't live in a post-truth society, as has been claimed, but rather a myside society. Our problem is not that we are unable to value and respect truth and facts, but that we are unable to agree on commonly accepted truth and facts. We believe that our side knows the truth. Post-truth? That describes the other side. The inevitable result is political polarization. Stanovich shows what science can tell us about myside bias: how common it is, how to avoid it, and what purposes it serves. Stanovich explains that although myside bias is ubiquitous, it is an outlier among cognitive biases. It is unpredictable. Intelligence does not inoculate against it, and myside bias in one domain is not a good indicator of bias shown in any other domain. Stanovich argues that because of its outlier status, myside bias creates a true blind spot among the cognitive elite--those who are high in intelligence, executive functioning, or other valued psychological dispositions. They may consider themselves unbiased and purely rational in their thinking, but in fact they are just as biased as everyone else. Stanovich investigates how this bias blind spot contributes to our current ideologically polarized politics, connecting it to another recent trend: the decline of trust in university research as a disinterested arbiter.

The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking

The Bias That Divides Us

This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. Teaching students to become better consumers of psychological research. Keith Stanovich's widely used and highly acclaimed book presents a short introduction to the critical thinking skills that will help students to better understand the subject matter of psychology. How to Think Straight about Psychology, 10e helps students recognize pseudoscience and be able to distinguish it from true psychological research, aiding students to become more discriminating consumers of psychological information. Learning Goals Upon completing this book, readers should be able to: Evaluate psychological claims they encounter in the general media. Distinguish between pseudoscience and true psychological research. Apply psychological knowledge to better understand events in the world around them.

How to Think Straight About Psychology

In Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World, Keith E. Stanovich demonstrates how work in the cognitive psychology of decision making has implications for the large and theoretically contentious debates about the nature of human rationality. Written specifically for undergraduate psychology students, the book presents a very practical approach to decision making, which is too often perceived by students as an artificial set of skills used only in academia and not in the real world. Instead, Stanovich shows how good decision-making procedures support rational behavior that enables people to act most efficiently to fulfill their goals. He explains how the concept of rationality is understood in cognitive science in terms of good decision making and judgment. Books in the Fundamentals of Cognition series serve as ideal instructional resources for advanced courses in cognitive psychology. They provide an up-to-date, well-organized survey of our current understanding of the major theories of cognitive psychology. The books are concise, which allows instructors to incorporate the latest original research and readings into their courses without overburdening their students. Focused without being too advanced--and comprehensive without being too broad--these books are the perfect resource for both students and instructors.

Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World

The last 25 years have seen tremendous advances in the study of psychological processes in reading. Our growing body of knowledge on the reading process and reading acquisition has applications to such important problems as the prevention of reading difficulties and the identification of effective instructional practices. This volume summarizes the gains that have been made in key areas of reading research and provides insights on current controversies and debates. The volume is divided into seven parts, with each part begininning with an introductory chapter presenting findings on the topic at hand, followed by one or more classic papers from the author's research program. Issues covered include phonological processes and context effects in reading, the "reading wars" and how they should be resolved, the meaning of the term "dyslexia," and the cognitive effects and benefits of reading. --From publisher's description.

Scientific Foundations and New Frontiers

Progress in Understanding Reading

This widely used brief paperback supplement focuses on applying critical thinking techniques to standard concepts in psychology and teaches students to recognize and critically appraise pseudoscience. In particular, this text provides tips on evaluating claims that arise in discussions of psychology in the media and self-help literature. By boldly examining common misconceptions in psychology, this text helps students become more critical and discriminating consumers of psychological information. *Examples used to illustrate psychological concepts have been updated to enhance student interest. *A total of 132 new references integrate contemporary studies to provide a current view of the field. *Section on the concept of memes (made famous by Richard Dawkins) and itsrelation to falsifiability has been added to Chapter 12. *Presents psychological topics such as falsifiability, operationalism, experimentalcontrol, converging evidence, correlational vs. experimental studies, andstatistics as tools for critical evaluation, providing students with a set of practical consumer skills to independently evaluate psychological claims. * Provides instructors with the opportunity to teach crit

For introductory psychology courses at two year or four year institutions. Also for specialty classes throughout the discipline that focus on critical thinking, science vs. pseudoscience, and discrimating valid research in the field. Keith Stanovich's widely used and highly acclaimed book helps students become more discriminating consumers of psychological information, helping them recognize pseudoscience and be able to distinguish it from true psychological research. Stanovich helps instructors teach critical thinking skills within the rich context of psychology. It is the leading text of its kind. How to Think Straight About Psychology says about the discipline of psychology what many instructors would like to say but haven't found a way to. That is one reason adopters have called it “an instructor's dream text” and often comment “I wish I had written it. It tells my students just what I want them to hear about psychology”.

How To Think Straight About Psychology: Pearson New International Edition

NOTE: This edition features the same content as the traditional text in a convenient, three-hole-punched, loose-leaf version. Books a la Carte also offer a great value; this format costs significantly less than a new textbook. Before purchasing, check with your instructor or review your course syllabus to ensure that you select the correct ISBN. For courses in introductory psychology, critical thinking, and research and experimental methods. Market-leading consumer's guide to assessing psychological claims Widely used and highly acclaimed, How to Think Straight About Psychology introduces students to the critical thinking skills they need to independently evaluate psychological information. Students will learn to analyze psychological claims found in the media, distinguish between pseudoscience and true psychological research, and apply psychological knowledge to the world around them. The 11th edition covers an extensive range of new topics and examples illustrating psychological principles, pseudoscience, and issues obscuring the real and growing knowledge base in the field of psychology.

How to Think Straight about Psychology, Books a la Carte

Critics of intelligence tests writers such as Robert Sternberg, Howard Gardner, and Daniel Goleman have argued in recent years that these tests neglect important qualities such as emotion, empathy, and interpersonal skills. However, such critiques imply that though intelligence tests may miss certain key noncognitive areas, they encompass most of what is important in the cognitive domain. In this book, Keith E. Stanovich challenges this widely held assumption.Stanovich shows that IQ tests (or their proxies, such as the SAT) are radically incomplete as measures of cognitive functioning. They fail to assess traits that most people associate with good thinking, skills such as judgment and decision making. Such cognitive skills are crucial to real-world behavior, affecting the way we plan, evaluate critical evidence, judge risks and probabilities, and make effective decisions. IQ tests fail to assess these skills of rational thought, even though they are measurable cognitive processes. Rational thought is just as important as intelligence, Stanovich argues, and it should be valued as highly as the abilities currently measured on intelligence tests.

The Psychology of Rational Thought

What Intelligence Tests Miss

Integrating a decade-long program of empirical research with current cognitive theory, this book demonstrates that psychological research has profound implications for current debates about what it means to be rational. The author brings new evidence to bear on these issues by demonstrating that patterns of individual differences--largely ignored in disputes about human rationality--have strong implications for explanations of the gap between normative and descriptive models of human behavior. Separate chapters show how patterns of individual differences have implications for all of the major critiques of purported demonstrations of human irrationality in the heuristics and biases literature. In these critiques, it has been posited that experimenters have observed performance errors rather than systematically irrational responses; the tasks have required computational operations that exceed human cognitive capacity; experimenters have applied the wrong normative model to the task; and participants have misinterpreted the tasks. In a comprehensive set of studies, Stanovich demonstrates that gaps between normative and descriptive models of performance on some tasks can be accounted for by positing these alternative explanations, but that not all discrepancies from normative models can be so explained. Individual differences in rational thought can in part be predicted by psychological dispositions that are interpreted as characteristic biases in people's intentional-level psychologies. Presenting the most comprehensive examination of individual differences in the heuristics and biases literature that has yet been published, experiments and theoretical insights in this volume contextualize the heuristics and biases literature exemplified in the work of various investigators.

Studies of individual Differences in Reasoning

Who Is Rational?

Maggie E. Toplak

Richard F. West

Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Theoretical underpinnings -- Definitions of rationality in philosophy, cognitive science, and lay discourse -- Rationality, intelligence, and the functional architecture of the mind -- Overcoming miserly processing : detection, override, and mindware -- A framework for the comprehensive assessment of rational thinking (CART) -- The components of rational thought assessed by the CART -- Probabilistic and statistical reasoning -- Scientific reasoning -- Avoidance of miserly information processing : direct tests -- Avoidance of miserly information processing : indirect effects -- Probabilistic numeracy, financial literacy, sensitivity to expected value, and risk knowledge -- Contaminated mindware -- The dispositions and attitudes of rationality -- Comprehensive rational thinking assessment : data and conclusions -- Associations among the subtests : a short-form CART -- Associations among the subtests : the full-form CART -- The CART : context, caveats, and questions -- The social and practical implications of a rational thinking test -- Appendix: Structure and sample items for the subtests and scales of the comprehensive assessment of rational thinking -- References -- Index

Keith E. Stanovich

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