Why People Make Errors When They Engage in Deductive Reasoning - Term Paper Example

Discuss two accounts of why people make errors when they engage in deductive reasoning Introduction: During the process exploring numerous dimensions of human behaviorist aspects, which has become one of the major preoccupations of modern psychology and a great deal of emphasis is provided on psychological disorientation, it has also been observed that while functioning within an organizational structure, people often tend to repeat certain mistakes in the context of interpreting facts depending over their human rational. Making mistakes in a workplace is quite natural for a fresher as such an individual is not properly efficient in using his rational according to the responsibility that has been assigned to them. However, on several occasion it has also been observed that quite common mistakes, such as, interpretation of data, viewing numerical figures, or pushing wrong button with the perception that they actually are doing the right things, have led to huge disasters, often putting reputation and lives of people working in the organization at the state of jeopardy. Even in daily life also recurrence of such incidents can be observed, and one of the most common examples can be cited in the common tendency of people to forget of collecting their credit or debit cards from cash machines. Reflecting over frequency of occurrence of such incidents and the trouble that customers were facing, the baking organization decided to alter the early models of cash machines and new system was implemented that ensures delivery of cards prior to delivery of money (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, June 2001, p. 4). Such forgetful response, in terms of psychological explanation has been observed as “natural enough … as the main objective of the action had been achieved: obtaining money. The task was thus mentally marked as being complete before all necessary states of the transaction had been carried out” (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, June 2001, p. 4). Deductive reasoning and Cognitive Psychology: Psychologists are of opinion that commission of such errors occurs mostly during deductive reasoning. Roughly the process of deductive reasoning can be defined as the “reasoning process in which one goes from general to the specific” (Huber, and Snider, p. 40). However, this definition does not cover the entire scope of deductive reasoning as this process also includes “disjunctive” and “hypothetical” reasoning process. Irrespective of such failure, such definition can be regarded as essence behind the idea of deductive reasoning (Huber, and Snider, 2006, p. 40). The cognitive psychological discipline has taken serious steps to address this issue as it has been realized that unless a proper solution to this problem and scope for recurrence of such problem cannot be found, both organizational reputation and security factor of common people can encounter a situation of crisis. According to psychological definition, cognitive psychology “is concerned with the internal processes involved in making sense of the environment, and deciding what action might be appropriate. These processes include attention, perception, learning, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning and thinking” (Eysenck, and Keane, 2005, p. 1). It has been scientifically proved that response to an action undergo a series of steps. After reception of stimulus, human sensory organs provide attention, resulting in sensory perception. Depending on that perception thought is processed and finally decision is made that how or in which manner an individual will respond to an action (Eysenck, and Keane, 2005, p. 2). Thus, it is quite evident that in order to respond to an action, the process of deductive reasoning will depend on each of these steps and fluctuation of either of such steps would result in commission of error. As it has been scientifically proved that almost 90% of workplace accidents occur due to human error during the process of deductive reasoning and factors like, attention, perception, memory and lack of logical reasoning have been regarded as main factors behind such occurrences (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, June 2001, p. 1). The high reliability organizations are of opinion that in order to receive organizational success it is important to properly evaluate or capitalize over the aspect of human variability; however, at the same time it has also been a major concern for such organizations that to churn out maximum benefit both for organization and people working with it, it is important to find out scopes of such failure and how those situations can be overcome (Reason, Mar 18 2000). Thus, sufficient importance has been casted over proper designing of the devices so that the possibility of error, generated from deductive reasoning can be lessened to a considerable extent: “From studies of other design oriented disciplines and investigations of the nature of design it has been established that successful design in such innovative situations needs strong scientific bases to underpin the enterprise: the exploration of a vast space of imaginable design possibilities must be constrained” (Wood, Cox, and Cheng, February 2006, p. 589). It has also been found that lack of attention and proper perception of facts are two accounts that most frequently result in occurrence of erroneous decision making or responding to a situation, generated out of deductive reasoning. Deductive Reasoning: Problems of Attention and Perception generated from Visual Perception Errors resulting from visual perception and leading to lack of attention or erroneous perception are quite frequent in both professional and personal life. It will not be tough to find such incidents, where an individual has perceived certain facts in a wrong manner and interpreted that to others in an altogether different manner than it actually is. Verbal directives conferred to a subordinate by a superior have been misheard and completely different task was done, such incidents are common and often have led the company to justify their mistake with great difficulty. Lack of attention and perception of facts, to which extent can derogate a situation, the disaster of Three Mile Island can be a bright example in that context. Temperature gauge of the plant, while was reading 285 degree Fahrenheit, it was constantly been misread by efficient furnace operators as 235 degrees and they paid no importance to the situation, leading to huge destruction of both life and property (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, June 2001, p. 4). These incidents clearly point out that in each case of deductive reasoning problems of providing adequate attention or perceiving facts according to their actual nature have resulted in accidents or occurrence of unfortunate incidents. Attention, as has been opined by psychologists, “is a process of selection and selective processing, required because the brain has a limited information processing capacity” (Wood, Cox, and Cheng, February 2006, p. 589), is the most vital aspect in the context of deductive reasoning as in this process an individual is required to select the correct depending over his individual rational and keeping in mind the responsibility assigned to him. While mistakes committed due to lack of attention, the responsibility is entirely thrust upon an individual or a particular department; but, behind development of such lack of attention, very often, factors like monotony of job assignment, demoralization and constant work pressure often play vital parts (Matthews, 2000, p. 87). Keeping these factors in mind, the modern organizations are taking help of divided attention studies in order to evaluate an individual’s “ability to concentrate under high levels of task demand” (Matthews, 2000, p. 87) so that in case of deductive reasoning a situation of least error making possibility can be secured to employees. According to Marr’s theory of visual perception, it is dependent over twofold issue, “…first is “grey-level” representation, or spatial array of values of light intensity and hue, while the second is a symbolic specification of the positions, motions, and identities of surrounding objects. Conceived in this way, the problem is then to understand how the first representation can be processed to obtain the second” (Bruce, Green, and Georgeson, 2003, p. 80). In case of deductive reasoning, confusion of human mind occurs between processing of first representation to the second. In case of auditory perception, several factors are also associated that lead to lack of attention and finally resulting in miscommunication within an organization. Interpretation of a fact, while represented in an auditory manner, is dependent on several factors such as loudness, throwing of pitch and depth of speech. If adequate attention is not provided on each of these factors, while delivering a direction in a verbal way, there is always a high risk that required information will be remain undelivered and the subject, automatically will tend to interpret according to his psychological preferences, which might not always address actual requirement of the situation. Moreover, orientation of tonality, `throwing of worlds and pace of delivery of a speech also need to be oriented according to the distance between the deliverer and the listener (Mather, 2006). According to cognitive psychological interpretation, processing of information is to a great extent dependent on perception of facts or date or information. However, if proper measurement of the distance and orientations regarding voice, throw and pace of speech cannot be done, reception of the audio stimulus in brain will encounter trouble and consequently, during the process of deductive reasoning an individual’s tendency to commit erroneous decision enhances to a greater extent. Conclusion: An individual’s capacity of deductive reasoning is best evaluated when according to demand of the situation and responsibility provided to him, the choice or choices he is opting for. On several occasions, when a person has to take decision of his individual actions, he might go for experimenting with his decision making capacity; but in organizational context, where decision or choice is one and that also has been determined by the authority, lack of communication, often result in yielding of situations like lack of attention or inefficiency in proper perception of the situation. Naturally, deductive reasoning also undergoes the wrong process, enhancing the possibility of making erroneous decisions. In order to avoid such situations, proper communication and scope for proper attention should be provided to employees so that the problems related to lack of attention and misinterpretation of a situation can be avoided. References Bruce, V. Green, P.R. and Georgeson, M.A. (2003). Visual perception : physiology, psychology and ecology. (4th Ed). London: Psychology Press. Eysenck, M.W. and Keane, M.T. (2005). Cognitive psychology: a students handbook. (5th Ed). London: Taylor & Francis. Mather, G. (2006). Foundations of perception. London: Psychology Press. Matthews, G. (2000). Human performance: cognition, stress, and individual differences. London: Psychology Press. Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. (June 2001). “Managing Human Error”. Number 156. London: The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. Reason, J. (March 2000). “Human error: models and management”. British Medical Journal 18; 320(7237): 768–770. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117770/. Accessed on: July 22, 2010. Snider, A. and Huber, R.B. (2006). Influencing through argument. Istanbul: IDEA. Wood, S. Cox, R. and Cheng, P. (February 7, 2006). “Attention design: Eight issues to consider”. Computers in Human Behavior 22 (2006) 588–602. Georgia: Elsevier Ltd. Read More