Jonathan St. B. T. Evans - Hypothetical thinking: dual processes in reasoning and judgement

Cover

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HYPOTHETICAL THINKING

Hypothetical thought involves the imagination of possibilities and the exploration of their consequences by a process of mental simulation. Using a recently developed theoretical framework called Hypothetical Thinking Theory, Jonathan St B. T. Evans provides an integrated theoretical account of a wide range of psychological studies on hypothesis testing, reasoning, judgement and decision making.

Hypothetical thinking theory is built on three key principles, implemented in a revised and updated version of Evans well-known heuristicanalytic theory of reasoning. The central claim of this book is that this theory can provide an integrated account of some apparently very diverse phenomena including confirmation bias in hypothesis testing, acceptance of fallacies in deductive reasoning, belief biases in reasoning and judgement, biases of statistical judgement and a number of characteristic findings in the study of decision making. The author also provides broad ranging discussion of cognitive biases, human rationality and dual-process theories of higher cognition.

Hypothetical Thinking draws on and develops arguments first proposed in Evans earlier work from this series, Bias in Human Reasoning. In the new theory, however, cognitive biases are attributed equally to analytic and heuristic processing and a much wider range of phenomena are reviewed and discussed. It will therefore be of great interest to researchers and post-graduates in psychology and the cognitive sciences, as well as to undergraduate students looking for a comprehensive review of current work on reasoning and decision making.

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North American Editors:

Henry L. Roediger, III, Washington University in St. Louis

James R. Pomerantz, Rice University

European Editors:

Alan D. Baddeley, University of York

Vicki Bruce, University of Edinburgh

Jonathan Grainger, Universit de Provence

Essays in Cognitive Psychology is designed to meet the need for rapid publication of brief volumes in cognitive psychology. Primary topics include perception, movement and action, attention, memory, mental representation, language and problem solving. Furthermore, the series seeks to define cognitive psychology in its broadest sense, encompassing all topics either informed by, or informing, the study of mental processes. As such, it covers a wide range of subjects including computational approaches to cognition, cognitive neuroscience, social cognition, and cognitive development, as well as areas more traditionally defined as cognitive psychology. Each volume in the series makes a conceptual contribution to the topic by reviewing and synthesizing the existing research literature, by advancing theory in the area, or by some combination of these missions. The principal aim is that authors provide an overview of their own highly successful research programme in an area. Volumes also include an assessment of current knowledge and identification of possible future trends in research. Each book is a self-contained unit supplying the advanced reader with a well-structured review of the work described and evaluated.

Titles in preparation

Gernsbacher: Suppression and Enhancement in Language Comprehension

Park: Cognition and Aging

Mulligan: Implicit Memory

Surprenant & Neath: Principles of Memory

Brown: Tip-of-the-tongue Phenomenon

Recently published

Gallo: Associative Illusions of Memory

Sarris: Rational Psychophysics in Humans and Animals

Cowan: Working Memory Capacity

McNamara: Semantic Priming

Brown: The Dj Vu Experience

Coventry & Garrod: Seeing, Saying, and Acting

Robertson: Space, Objects, Minds, and Brains

Cornoldi & Vecchi: Visuo-spatial Working Memory and Individual Differences

Sternberg et al.: The Creativity Conundrum

Poletiek: Hypothesis-testing Behaviour

Garnham: Mental Models and the Interpretations of Anaphora

For continually updated information about published and forthcoming titles in the Essays in Cognitive Psychology series, please visit: www.psypress.com/essays

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Dual Processes in Reasoning and Judgement

Jonathan St B. T. Evans

HOVE AND NEW YORK

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First published 2007 by Psychology Press
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Psychology Press
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Psychology Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.

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2007 Psychology Press

Cover design by Lisa Dynan

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Evans, Jonathan St. B. T., 1948
Hypothetical thinking: dual processes in reasoning and judgement/
Jonathan St. B. T. Evans. 1st ed.
p. cm. (Essays in cognitive psychology)