Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1Surveying the Imagination Landscape
- Part ITheoretical Perspectives on the Imagination
- Part IIImagery-Based Forms of the Imagination
- Part IIIIntentionality-Based Forms of the Imagination
- Part IVNovel Combinatorial Forms of the Imagination
- 27On the Interaction Between Episodic and Semantic Representations – Constructing a Unified Account of Imagination
- 28How Imagination Supports Narrative Experiences for Textual, Audiovisual, and Interactive Narratives
- 29Development of the Fantasy-Reality Distinction
- 30Imagining the Real: Buddhist Paths to Wholeness in Tibet
- 31Hypothetical Thinking
- 32The Counterfactual Imagination: The Impact of Alternatives to Reality on Morality
- 33A Look Back at Pioneering Theories of the Creative Brain
- Part VPhenomenology-Based Forms of the Imagination
- Part VIAltered States of the Imagination
- Name Index
- Subject Index
- References
31 - Hypothetical Thinking
from Part IV - Novel Combinatorial Forms of the Imagination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2020
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1Surveying the Imagination Landscape
- Part ITheoretical Perspectives on the Imagination
- Part IIImagery-Based Forms of the Imagination
- Part IIIIntentionality-Based Forms of the Imagination
- Part IVNovel Combinatorial Forms of the Imagination
- 27On the Interaction Between Episodic and Semantic Representations – Constructing a Unified Account of Imagination
- 28How Imagination Supports Narrative Experiences for Textual, Audiovisual, and Interactive Narratives
- 29Development of the Fantasy-Reality Distinction
- 30Imagining the Real: Buddhist Paths to Wholeness in Tibet
- 31Hypothetical Thinking
- 32The Counterfactual Imagination: The Impact of Alternatives to Reality on Morality
- 33A Look Back at Pioneering Theories of the Creative Brain
- Part VPhenomenology-Based Forms of the Imagination
- Part VIAltered States of the Imagination
- Name Index
- Subject Index
- References
Summary
Hypothetical thinking involves imagining possibilities and mentally exploring their consequences. This chapter overviews a contemporary, integrative account of such thinking in the form of Jonathan Evans’s hypothetical thinking theory. This default-interventionist, dual–process theory operates according to three principles: relevance, singularity, and satisficing. To illustrate the explanatory strength of the theory a range of empirical evidence is considered that has arisen from extensive research on hypothesis testing, which involves individuals generating and evaluating hypotheses as they attempt to derive a more general understanding of information. The chapter shows how key findings from hypothesis-testing research undertaken in both laboratory and real-world studies (e.g. in domains such as scientific reasoning) are readily explained by the principles embedded in hypothetical thinking theory. The chapter additionally points to important new directions for future research on hypothetical thinking, including the need for: (1) further studies of real-world hypothesis testing in collaborative contexts, including ones outside of the domain of scientific reasoning; (2) increased neuroscientific analysis of the brain systems underpinning hypothetical thinking so as to inform theoretical developments; and (3) systematic individual-differences investigations to explore the likely association between people’s capacity to think creatively and their ability to engage in effective hypothetical thinking.
Keywords
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination , pp. 514 - 528Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
References
Abraham, A. (2016). The Imaginative Mind. Human Brain Mapping, 37, 4197–4211.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Abraham, A.(2018). The Neuroscience of Creativity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ball, L. J., and Wade, C. N. (2017). Pragmatic Factors in Wason’s 2–4-6 Task: Implications for Real-World Hypothesis Testing. In Galbraith, N, Lucas, E. J., and Over, D. E. (eds.), The Thinking Mind: A Festschrift for Ken Manktelow. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 29–39.Google Scholar
Cherubini, P., Castelvecchio, E., and Cherubini, A. M. (2005). Generation of Hypotheses in Wason’s 2–4–6 Task: An Information Theory Approach. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58A, 309–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunbar, K. N. (1997). How Scientists Think: On-line Creativity and Conceptual Change in Science. In Ward, T. B., Smith, S. M., and Viad, J (eds.), Creative Thought: An Investigation of Conceptual Structures and Processes. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 461–493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunbar, K. (2001). What Scientific Thinking Reveals about the Nature of Cognition. In Cowley, K, Schunn, C. D., and Okada, T (eds.), Designing for Science: Implications from Everyday, Classroom, and Professional Settings. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 115–140.Google Scholar
Elqayam, S., and Evans, J. St. B. T. (2011). Subtracting “Ought” from “Is”: Descriptivism versus Normativism in the Study of Human Thinking. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 233–248.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T. (2006). The Heuristic-Analytic Theory of Reasoning: Extension and Evaluation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 378–395.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Evans, J. St. B. T(2007). Hypothetical Thinking: Dual Processes in Reasoning and Judgement. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T(2008). Dual-Processing Accounts of Reasoning, Judgment and Social Cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 255–278.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T(2010). Thinking Twice: Two Minds in One Brain. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T(2014). Reasoning, Biases and Dual Processes: The Lasting Impact of Wason (1960). Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69, 2076–2092.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T(2018). Dual-Process Theories. In Ball, L. J. and Thompson, V. A. (eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 151–166.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., and Elqayam, S. (2011). Towards a Descriptivist Psychology of Reasoning and Decision Making. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 275–290.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., and Stanovich, K. E. (2013a). Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition: Advancing the Debate. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 223–241.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., and Stanovich, K. E.(2013b). Theory and Metatheory in the Study of Dual Processing: Reply to Comments. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 263–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gale, M., and Ball, L. J. (2006). Dual-Goal Facilitation in Wason’s 2–4-6 Task: What Mediates Successful Rule Discovery? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 873–885.Google Scholar
Gale, M., and Ball, L. J.(2009). Exploring the Determinants of Dual Goal Facilitation in a Rule Discovery Task. Thinking and Reasoning, 15, 294–315.Google Scholar
Gale, M., and Ball, L. J.(2012). Contrast Class Cues and Performance Facilitation in a Hypothesis-Testing Task: Evidence for an Iterative Counterfactual Model. Memory & Cognition, 40, 408–419.Google Scholar
Goel, V., and Waechter, R. (2018). Inductive and Deductive Reasoning: Integrating Insights from Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience. In Ball, L. J. and Thompson, V. A. (eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 218–247.Google Scholar
Gorman, M. E. (1995). Confirmation, Disconfirmation, and Invention: The Case of Alexander Graham Bell and the Telephone. Thinking and Reasoning, 1, 31–53.Google Scholar
Gorman, M. E.(2018). Scientific Thinking. In Ball, L. J. and Thompson, V. A. (eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 248–267.Google Scholar
Gorman, M. E., and Gorman, M. E. (1984). Comparison of Disconfirmatory, Confirmatory and Control Strategies on Wason’s 2–4-6 Task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 36A, 629–648.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jung, R. E., and Vartanian, O. (eds.) (2018). The Cambridge Handbook of the Neuroscience of Creativity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kareev, Y., and Halberstadt, N. (1993). Evaluating Negative Tests and Refutations in a Rule Discovery Task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 46A, 715–727.Google Scholar
Kareev, Y., Halberstadt, K., and Shafir, D. (1993). Improving Performance and Increasing the Use of Non-Positive Testing in a Rule-Discovery Task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 46A, 729–742.Google Scholar
Kaufman, S. B., Quilty, L. C., Grazioplene, R. G., et al. (2016). Openness to Experience and Intellect Differentially Predict Creative Achievement in the Arts and Sciences. Journal of Personality, 84, 248–258.Google Scholar
Klayman, J., and Ha, Y.-W. (1987). Confirmation, Disconfirmation, and Information in Hypothesis Testing. Psychological Review, 94, 211–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klayman, J., and Ha, Y.-W.(1989). Hypothesis Testing in Rule Discovery: Strategy, Structure and Content. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 15, 596–604.Google Scholar
Legrenzi, P., Girotto, V., and Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1993). Focussing in Reasoning and Decision Making. Cognition, 49, 37–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morley, N. J., Ball, L. J., and Ormerod, T. C. (2006). How the Detection of Insurance Fraud Succeeds and Fails. Psychology, Crime & Law, 12, 163–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mynatt, C. R., Doherty, M. E., and Dragan, W. (1993). Information Relevance, Working Memory, and the Consideration of Alternatives. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 46, 759–778.Google Scholar
Ormerod, T. C., Ball, L. J., and Morley, N. J. (2012). Informing the Development of a Fraud Prevention Toolset through a Situated Analysis of Fraud Investigation Expertise. Behaviour & Information Technology, 31, 371–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, R. P., and Addis, D. R. (2018). A Common Mode of Processing Governing Divergent Thinking and Future Imagination. In Jung, R. E. and Vartanian, O (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Neuroscience of Creativity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 211–230.Google Scholar
Silvia, P. J., Beaty, R. E., and Nusbaum, E. C. (2013). Verbal Fluency and Creativity: General and Specific Contributions of Broad Retrieval Ability (Gr) Factors to Divergent Thinking. Intelligence, 41, 328–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, H. A.(1996). The Sciences of the Artificial. 3rd edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sloman, S. A. (1996). The Empirical Case for Two Systems of Reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 3–22.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. (1999). Who is Rational? Studies of Individual Differences in Reasoning. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanovich, K. E.(2004). The Robot’s Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E.(2009). Distinguishing the Reflective, Algorithmic, and Autonomous Minds: Is It Time for a Tri-Process Theory? In St., J Evans, B. T., and Frankish, K. E. (eds.), In Two Minds: Dual Processes and Beyond. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 55–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stupple, E. J., and Ball, L. J. (2014). The Intersection between Descriptivism and Meliorism in Reasoning Research: Further Proposals in Support of “Soft Normativism”. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, article no. 1269.Google Scholar
Thompson, V. A. (2013). Why it Matters: The Implications of Autonomous Processes for Dual Process Theories – Commentary on Evans & Stanovich (2013). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 253–256. doi:10.1177/1745691613483476.Google Scholar
Tversky, A., and Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5, 207–232.Google Scholar
Tweney, R. D. (2009). Mathematical Representations in Science: A Cognitive–Historical Case History. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1, 758–776.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tweney, R. D., Doherty, M. E., Warner, W. J., et al. (1980). Strategies of Rule Discovery in an Inference Task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 32, 109–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (2012). Utilities in the 2–4-6 Task. Experimental Psychology, 59, 265–271.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vallée-Tourangeau, F., Austin, N. G., and Rankin, S. (1995). Inducing a Rule in Wason’s 2–4–6 Task: A Test of the Information-Quantity and Goal-Complementarity Hypotheses. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 48A, 895–914.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vallée-Tourangeau, F. and Payton, T. (2008). Graphical Representation Fosters Discovery in the 2-4-6 Task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61(4), 625–640.Google Scholar
van der Henst, J. B., Rossi, S., and Schroyens, W. (2002). When Participants Are Not Misled They Are Not so Bad after All: A Pragmatic Analysis of a Rule Discovery Task. In Gray, W. D. and Schunn, C (eds.), Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 902–907.Google Scholar
Walsh, D., Dando, C. J., and Ormerod, T. C. (2018). Triage Decision-Making by Welfare Fraud Investigators. Journal of Applied Research in Memory & Cognition, 7, 82–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wason, P. C. (1960). On the Failure to Eliminate Hypotheses in a Conceptual Task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12, 129–140.Google Scholar
Wason, P. C.(1966). Reasoning. In Foss, B. M. (ed.), New Horizons in Psychology I. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 106–137.Google Scholar
Wason, P. C., and Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1972). Psychology of Reasoning: Structure and Content. London, UK: Batsford.Google Scholar
Wetherick, N. E. (1962). Eliminative and Enumerative Behaviour in a Conceptual Task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 14, 129–140.Google Scholar
Wharton, C. M., Cheng, P. W., and Wickens, T. D. (1993). Hypothesis-Testing Strategies: Why Two Goals Are Better Than One. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 46A, 743–758.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Accessibility standard: Unknown
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
Accessibility compliance for the HTML of this chapter is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.