Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Need for cognition

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 116 posts

Re: Need for cognition

#41

Post by SamPatt »

Silverback_VII wrote: post #6

Too much thinking is like a heavy dish, it makes you sluggish and sleepy. Remember that everything that moves quickly and elegantly through the world does so without too much thought.

Not sure everyone has a choice in this.

My default is deeper thought, occasionally to my detriment. I can only operate quickly if I have extensive experience doing that thing.

Learning new sports or new mental tasks is slow and requires a lot of discomfort, intentionally pushing my body and mind to just do something they don't feel ready for.

I sometimes do wish I could act more quickly but thus far the only method which works is to do the thing a lot.

Re: Need for cognition

#42

Post by benrawk »

optimalsolver wrote: post #36

>Need for cognition has been variously defined as "a need to structure relevant situations in meaningful, integrated ways" and "a need to understand and make reasonable the experiential world" - So basically your average conspiracy theorist.

It is not a crazy idea to conceptualize some conspiracy theorists as people who (1) have a high need for cognition (brain wheels are always turning), and (2) direct that at developing wrong/misguided/motivated frameworks for the world.

Re: Need for cognition

#43

Post by optimalsolver »

uoaei wrote: post #40
optimalsolver wrote: post #36

>Need for cognition has been variously defined as "a need to structure relevant situations in meaningful, integrated ways" and "a need to understand and make reasonable the experiential world" - So basically your average conspiracy theorist.

Conspiracy theorists demote things like "parsimony" in favor of "holism" and "explanatory power". There's a reason the text says "reasonable" and not merely "comprehensible".

"Reasonable" is pretty subjective.

Re: Need for cognition

#44

Post by uoaei »

optimalsolver wrote: post #43
uoaei wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conspiracy theorists demote things like "parsimony" in favor of "holism" and "explanatory power". There's a reason the text says "reasonable" and not merely "comprehensible".

"Reasonable" is pretty subjective.

"Being reasonable" is more or less universally defined as "balancing between parsimony and explainability in a good-faith analysis".

Take it from the entire field of philosophy of science if you won't take it from me.

Re: Need for cognition

#45

Post by jawns »

crazygringo wrote: post #38
jawns wrote: post #5

I haven't looked at the research yet, but this feels like it may have some correlation with a psychological trait called dogmatism, which is a defined as exhibiting great certainty about the correctness of one's views and an unwillingness to consider new evidence, or an unwillingness to adjust one's views in light of new evidence. Obviously, they're not the same. NFC pertains more to the desire to go through the proc…

The article discusses this explicitly, if what you're calling dogmatism is the inverse of the "openness to ideas" or "openness to experience", one of the Big 5 traits: > NFC has been found to be strongly associated with a number of independently developed constructs, specifically epistemic curiosity, typical intellectual engagement, and openness to ideas. I haven't come across the term "dogmatism" in the psychologica…

Let me Google that for you: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=dogmatism

There are even well-established scales for measuring it, e.g. https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/44/2/211/222790...

It is not synonymous with the Big 5 trait of openness to experience, but it is certainly related to it.

Re: Need for cognition

#46

Post by crazygringo »

jawns wrote: post #45
crazygringo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article discusses this explicitly, if what you're calling dogmatism is the inverse of the "openness to ideas" or "openness to experience", one of the Big 5 traits: > NFC has been found to be strongly associated with a number of independently developed constructs, specifically epistemic curiosity, typical intellectual engagement, and openness to ideas. I haven't come across the term "dogmatism" in the psychologica…

Let me Google that for you: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=dogmatism There are even well-established scales for measuring it, e.g. https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/44/2/211/222790... It is not synonymous with the Big 5 trait of openness to experience, but it is certainly related to it.

Thanks. Of course there's literature generally around it, although most of the citations seem to be in areas of philosophy, anthropology, and religion -- where you'd expect.

Just meant it's not really a term that's commonly used in psychology, not a standard viewpoint that's used much when discussing personality traits generally today. Unless there's a paradigm here I'm not familiar with. (And I'm sure there are niche studies on dogmatism specifically, as opposed to part of a broader model.)

Re: Need for cognition

#47

Post by mannykannot »

epgui wrote: post #8
mannykannot wrote: post #2

Maybe this is something that academics and conspiracy theorists share?

A genuine desire to learn? Really? I don’t think so.

This article does not use the word 'genuine' (or 'real', for that matter, though I have not searched for other synonyms.) In fact, my comment was prompted by the way that the definitions given here seem to avoid implying that those exhibiting this need are sticklers for the truth. It seems likely that they all think they are getting closer to the truth, and this would seem more pertinent, in defining a personality trait, than whether they actually succeed in doing so.

Re: Need for cognition

#48

Post by tiborsaas »

topherPedersen wrote: post #3

Some people don't have this. A lot of people aren't very curious at all. Last night in Austin I saw a full self driving car from Cruise drive by with no driver while I was at a crosswalk. No one noticed or cared that a car just drove by with no one in it! It was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen, and the people around me did not notice or care.

This happens with everything, people are only aware of things they are focusing on, the surroundings are just "assumed" to be there.

It's kinda like the invisible gorilla experiment: http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html

Re: Need for cognition

#49

Post by shrimp_emoji »

Jensson wrote: post #15
jawns wrote: post #5

I haven't looked at the research yet, but this feels like it may have some correlation with a psychological trait called dogmatism, which is a defined as exhibiting great certainty about the correctness of one's views and an unwillingness to consider new evidence, or an unwillingness to adjust one's views in light of new evidence. Obviously, they're not the same. NFC pertains more to the desire to go through the proc…

> Almost like "It's too overwhelming for me to actually think this through, so I'm choosing to just not." At some point the algorithms in our head has to stop trying to think about things and instead just go with an option. That happens at different points for everyone, some stop thinking earlier while others basically never stops thinking about things so have a hard time getting started with anything. I don't think…

Yep. I would say a crucial cognitive skill is to realize when it's a good point to stop processing and apply a probability heuristic (e.g., "dogma").

When do you stop doing your own research about vaccines and trust doctors? When do you stop writing your own code and trust a software library?

The world literally is too overwhelmingly complicated. It seems like the more you know about a facet of the world, the more complicated it starts to seem. At some point, you have appeal to specialization of authority and stop thinking or you'll be permanently DDoSed into inaction, make horrible mistakes, or both.

Re: Need for cognition

#50

Post by AussieWog93 »

reidjs wrote: post #31
topherPedersen wrote: post #3

Some people don't have this. A lot of people aren't very curious at all. Last night in Austin I saw a full self driving car from Cruise drive by with no driver while I was at a crosswalk. No one noticed or cared that a car just drove by with no one in it! It was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen, and the people around me did not notice or care.

I’m not that impressed by self driving cars because while the tech is cool it’s not really solving anything in my personal life. A car is basically self driving when I pay someone else to drive me where I go - end result is the same, I get where I need to go without having to drive the car.

For real? An Uber trip across the city costing $5 rather than $50 would be a game changer, as would finally being able to kill carparks on main roads.
Post reply on HN