[HN Gopher] Need for cognition
___________________________________________________________________
Need for cognition
Author : luu
Score : 147 points
Date : 2023-03-02 03:34 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| rossdavidh wrote:
| " People low in need for cognition are also more likely to rely
| on stereotypes alone in judging other people than those high in
| need for cognition."
|
| You know, I could believe that, but I can't help wondering if the
| people who do research in psychology (or most people in academia
| really) are not more likely to be high-NFC types, and thus not
| exactly objective in deciding what potential
| advantages/disadvantages to research. For example, who is less
| likely to be swayed by empirical evidence?
| asow92 wrote:
| I need for cognition on Need For Cognition.
| jawns wrote:
| 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 process of cognition, whereas dogmatism
| pertains more to defects of cognition (e.g. giving too much
| weight to our priors, being unwilling to update our priors).
|
| But in the cases of both low NFC and high dogmatism, it feels
| like there's a type of intellectual laziness or cognitive
| immaturity at play. Almost like "It's too overwhelming for me to
| actually think this through, so I'm choosing to just not."
|
| Similarly, both point to a lack of curiosity about the world or
| anything other that what we already know. (And, I would wager,
| both probably have a link to anti-intellectualism and
| authoritarianism, where we assume that whoever is in charge knows
| what they're doing better than the rest of us do.)
| kilgnad wrote:
| >But in the cases of both low NFC and high dogmatism, it feels
| like there's a type of intellectual laziness or cognitive
| immaturity at play. Almost like "It's too overwhelming for me
| to actually think this through, so I'm choosing to just not."
|
| NO. You are completely wrong. Dogmatism Is not laziness.
|
| It's fear of social dominance. It's too overwhelming to be
| humiliated socially by some other person on hacker news so
| dogmatic people end up taking the dogmatic route in order to
| defend their integrity. It's purely a social thing, not an
| intellectual thing.
|
| In fact, it takes more intelligence, more effort, more grit to
| defend a point that is, in actuality, wrong. It's basically
| hard mode.
|
| Here's the other thing. sometimes, these "dogmatic" people are
| actually RIGHT. Galileo was essentially a flat earther during
| his time. So the reality is nobody really knows the difference
| between dogmatism and high NFC. You could be either, it all
| depends on whether you're in actuality right or wrong.
|
| >But in the cases of both low NFC and high dogmatism, it feels
| like there's a type of intellectual laziness or cognitive
| immaturity at play. Almost like "It's too overwhelming for me
| to actually think this through, so I'm choosing to just not."
|
| This is wrong and insulting. Because the fact of the matter is
| most people have extremely high dogmatism. Who on the face of
| this earth will believe in something for 10 years and suddenly
| flip that belief in an instant when presented with solid
| evidence that the belief isn't true? Nobody. Because everyone
| is dogmatic.
|
| 99.99% of all debates and arguments on Hacker news are people
| finding evidence support a point, not using evidence to find a
| point. Key difference. People just don't function like that.
|
| And, unfortunately, neither do you.
| munificent wrote:
| Are you dogmatically arguing about a definition of
| "dogmatic"?
|
| Is this comment serious or some kind of meta-joke?
| kilgnad wrote:
| The meta meta thing about this is that not only am I
| dogmatically arguing for dogmatism, but what I say is
| logically true in such a way that people who disagree with
| me can't formulate an argument against it. They can only
| dogmatically downvote me rather then keep an open mind
| about dogmatism.
|
| It's a bit of joke. But it's more commentary about how
| everyone on HackerNews gets off on these "intelligence"
| articles when really they're just normal human beings with
| normal NFC and normal dogmatic tendencies.
| Jensson wrote:
| > 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 that it is fair to say that one is better than
| the other, they are just different and are good at solving
| different kinds of problems.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| 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.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| One would have thought this was obvious, but I guess some
| people just don't think too much about it.
|
| Traditionalism and conservatism are _vital_ aspects of human
| nature, not necessarily for the individual, definitely for at
| least some larger groups.
| [deleted]
| macrolocal wrote:
| Low NFC people get a bad rap because they're quick to dress up
| intellectual laziness with moral posturing.
|
| But cognition is as precious a resource as attention or compute
| these days, so maybe there's something to learn from them.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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 psychological
| literature. But the way you're presenting it seems extremely
| judgmental ("defects", "laziness", "immaturity"). You might be
| more interested in the more objective formulation:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience
| jawns wrote:
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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.)
| prettyStandard wrote:
| Update: I agree. Seems like low NFC is related to high
| dogmatism, and/or low openness.
|
| See: the Big 5 personality matrix.
|
| > Need for cognition is closely related to the five factor
| model domain openness to experience, typical intellectual
| engagement, and epistemic curiosity
| abeppu wrote:
| I wonder if we need better role models for embracing
| uncertainty. If you're a low NFC person, there are a bunch of
| high status people that take public dogmatic stances, and
| demonstrate that you have high confidence in a worldview of
| sweeping generalizations without having to think too hard if
| only you adopt the Dogma. But I can't really think of role
| models where someone says "X, Y, Z are all complex and the
| thing that's valuable in my life is W, so it's healthy and
| intentional that I neither think about X, Y, Z or have an
| opinion on them" and that's socially validated or even
| celebrated.
| munificent wrote:
| _> I wonder if we need better role models for embracing
| uncertainty._
|
| I've felt this way for a long time. American fiction and
| films are heavily skewed towards protagonists strong-willed
| protagonists that "trust their gut" and have a high bias to
| action. That leads people to believe that if you're right,
| you will immediately _know_ that you 're right and that
| spending time thinking about a problem means you're weak-
| willed.
|
| It's a toxic aspect of our culture. Obviously, courage and
| action are important. But so is learning from others,
| cooperating, and understanding ambiguity.
| LeonB wrote:
| Very true. Anyone urging caution, or any government
| department with "standards" is universally the bad guy in
| film.
|
| There's a huge gap between what is entertaining and what is
| good outside of fiction. "reality tv" makes this
| particularly dangerous as horrible (though entertaining)
| people become more and more famous, again and again. This
| spills over into some really dire consequences globally.
| For example -- and you wouldn't believe this unless you'd
| seen it happen -- the most powerful nation on Earth
| actually went so far as to elect a reality tv star to their
| highest office!
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| The Dogma usually includes statements like "people who don't
| care about X are part of the problem" and considerable social
| effort is spent on recruiting more "soldiers" and influencing
| group norms.
|
| The unaligned are considered "fodder" by the ideologically
| committed.
|
| Not everyone needs to be recruited. Most people can be kept
| in line by ensuring everyone knows what the "safe" view is
| within a specific group and occasionally punishing defectors.
| pixl97 wrote:
| This is generally but not always true.
|
| Lets make an imaginary situation where you live on an
| island and are running out of trees. There are mostly two
| sides here. The people that are burning though trees at a
| faster rate than they grow are the problem. Not caring
| about the problem, especially in the case you are the ones
| burning those trees is going to ensure 'Tree 0 day' comes.
|
| Everyone will get affected if you reach that point.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| I think we might be talking slightly past each other.
|
| It's absolutely true that for many values of X, being
| "unaligned" or "uncertain" on X does some harm.
|
| What I'm saying is that human social dynamics mean that
| there's usually a range of acceptable beliefs for issues
| X, Y & Z and it's wise to understand when it's acceptable
| to express uncertainty and when it's not.
|
| Uncertainty is a _stance_ , a _position_ , which can
| easily be outside the range of socially acceptable
| beliefs.
|
| For example, I have zero opinion on "body positivity".
| But I know that many groups will hold the opinion "it
| does no good if only we believe in body positivity, ALL
| of society needs to change". Expressing uncertainty or
| indifference in these situations will be construed as
| social defection by True Believers and punished.
| hammock wrote:
| > 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
|
| I mean, maybe. It also feels like how you describe a particular
| dog as needing a lot of mental stimulation (food puzzles,
| fulfilling work, etc)
| optimalsolver wrote:
| >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.
| uoaei wrote:
| 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".
| optimalsolver wrote:
| "Reasonable" is pretty subjective.
| uoaei wrote:
| "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.
| benrawk wrote:
| 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.
| parentheses wrote:
| High NFC with low education or access to information.
| BazookaMusic wrote:
| I would say it's more about low empathy and ability to
| scrutinize their beliefs. This is very often paired with a
| nice dose of narcissism which makes them think that
| everyone else is an idiot and has flawed thinking, while
| they're immune to it.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| You _are_ aware though that yesterday 's conspiracy theories
| have now repeatedly proven to become tomorrow's mainstream
| headlines, right?
| vmoore wrote:
| Some people are just natural philosophers. I was always one, and
| an un-analyzed life gets drab very quickly, for me at least. I
| like to entertain various ideas without taking them too
| seriously. I like Stoicism which I find very useful, and eastern
| philosophies like Buddhism. Too easy to become over-zealous about
| both of those philosophies.
|
| A test of your own personal philosophy is when you encounter
| adversity. Do you apply what you've learned, or make up something
| on-the-fly?
| aradox66 wrote:
| That's funny, I understand Buddhism to be about the pain caused
| by conceptualizing life and the importance of dropping an
| analytical frame.
| auxi wrote:
| I interpreted it as the pain being caused by experiencing
| one's own perceptions and the importance is put on
| conceptualizing life (the experiencing) and dropping the self
| :)
| macrolocal wrote:
| That sounds like Bergson more than Buddhism.
| [deleted]
| VLM wrote:
| An interesting meta observation is that google searches and
| machine learning can find a lot of stuff, but I couldn't find a
| path between the drive to rationalize and the drive toward
| cognition although the two are obviously in some way closely
| linked.
| Qwertysjsjs wrote:
| I didn't not understood my world very well and started in school
| to question everything.
|
| I later learned that my world view has a logical layer.
|
| In contrast others around me have a world view learned by their
| surroundings.
|
| That made it for me so much clearer why people can life with
| logical conflicts.
|
| Like the gay people still want to be part of the church.
|
| Or acting different in similar situations.
|
| Or stealing.
| renlo wrote:
| > Psychological research on the need for cognition has been
| conducted using self-report tests, where research participants
| answered a series of statements such as "I prefer my life to be
| filled with puzzles that I must solve" and were scored on how
| much they felt the statements represented them.
|
| This seems counter intuitive to me; I would consider myself
| someone that has a "need for cognition", but I am good at puzzles
| precisely because _I do not like being puzzled_. When I encounter
| something that doesn't make sense to me (a puzzle), it disturbs
| me so that I need to solve the puzzle and figure out why my
| assumptions were incorrect. I therefore dislike puzzles and I do
| not want them in my life. Puzzles are a contradiction of my
| assumptions. Maybe this is all "intolerance of ambiguity"
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| But then again isn't there a desirable thrill in solving those
| puzzles?
|
| I'm sure it gives you the same dopamine boost it gives me
| everytime that apparent conflict between my assumptions and
| reality gets resolved.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| 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.
| SamPatt wrote:
| 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.
| gowld wrote:
| And everything that withstands assault does so with thought.
| mlyle wrote:
| "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-
| books and by eminent people when they are making speeches,
| that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are
| doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization
| advances by extending the number of important operations
| which we can perform without thinking about them. _Operations
| of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle -- they are
| strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and
| must only be made at decisive moments._ " -Whitehead
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I don't agree. You can assault an experience as much as you
| like. Nevertheless the experience still stands, thought or no
| thought.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Maybe this is something that academics and conspiracy theorists
| share?
| epgui wrote:
| A genuine desire to learn? Really? I don't think so.
| mannykannot wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| VLM wrote:
| Unfortunately in contrast, academics are fans of yesterday's
| newspaper headlines, conspiracy theorists have repeatedly
| proven to be fans of tomorrow's newspaper headlines.
|
| However, big brother has never lied to us and only the worst
| people do not love big brother, so I don't officially support
| or believe any conspiracy theories. Also its too much work to
| check legacy media to see what's been admitted recently.
| topherPedersen wrote:
| 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Noticing isn't curiosity.
|
| And the opportunity for curiosity for purely seeing a thing is
| only the first few times you see it. You were in that window,
| but how do you know they were in that window?
| mlyle wrote:
| > and the people around me did not notice or care.
|
| This is such a transient thing.
|
| If you're not primed to notice a self driving car (already
| thinking about it / having read it) you may miss it.
|
| And once you've seen it a few times, the novelty decreases a
| lot.
|
| I try to keep wonder for things that I have experienced already
| (Holy crap; I'm in a metal tube that's going close to the speed
| of sound 7 miles high!) But pretty soon other things win (How
| long do I have to sit in this little seat? And I'm hungry...).
|
| Arguably the thing that is most extraordinary is that we've
| made these wonderful, bizarre things such a matter of routine.
| Look around you. Nearly every object in the civilized world is
| a constructed object, borne from human thought. Every street,
| every edifice, every artifice. Even almost all of the foods and
| raw ingredients have been crafted to meet our needs. Wow. But
| flour is a >30,000 year old technology and not something people
| get excited about...
| [deleted]
| Jensson wrote:
| People get used to that sort of thing quick. People once
| thought seeing a car was incredible, but when you see them all
| the time it doesn't register.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I was curious about the driverless metro trains in Copenhagen,
| and kind of in wonder. And then I commuted on them for years,
| and stopped thinking about who was driving.
| reidjs wrote:
| 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.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| 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.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Be careful assuming that humans (especially the humans you
| see) are the lion's share of cost for any system.
|
| Sure, Uber passes 60-75% of the fare to drivers, but that
| pays for the depreciation/opportunity cost of the vehicle,
| the energy to move the vehicle, the insurance, the
| cleaning, etc.
|
| A lot of the problems that these 'no brainer' new
| technology start-ups face (e.g., the autonomous delivery
| robots) is actually that they aren't that much cheaper than
| humans (for now).
| hinkley wrote:
| $5 would be a game changer but as you say, it's more
| likely to be $20 which is not that big of a game changer.
| Cognitron wrote:
| Reminds me of the Louis C.K. bit about flying
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b3dYS7PcAG4
| muyuu wrote:
| I don't think the underlying instinct here is curiosity, but
| rather the need for some coherence and the bias towards both
| having things match our preconceived models of reality, and fit
| our models to reality. Even though very often there just isn't
| solid information to make that coherence happen without just
| making up stuff to fit the gaps.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| 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
| lostgame wrote:
| Oh, wow - I had seen a version of this, years ago, as; I
| believe, a commercial.
|
| It was a _much_ , much better and far less obvious version, I
| can't tell because obviously I knew what I was expecting, but
| I _strongly_ feel with this 1999 version I absolutely would
| 've caught it. Very poorly done compared to the other one
| I've seen.
|
| Ah, here it is, this one uses a 'moonwalking bear'. Upon
| seeing them both again, I 110% agree with my assessment that
| the bear version is far, far superior.
|
| The space the original video uses is too small, and maybe
| it's that the camera angle is poor; it's so hard to tell but
| I'd honestly be surprised if too many people fell for the
| original today.
|
| I actually had troubles following the ball because the
| gorilla was just too obvious and distracting.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I actually saw one recently that had a panda walking
| through, but just to still get everyone who knew what to
| look for, they altered other properties of the scene and
| after the panda reveal, then reveal the multiple other, now
| obvious changes that were made. I won't specify in case
| someone hasn't seen but it was pretty amazing.
| mlyle wrote:
| > The space the original video uses is too small, and maybe
| it's that the camera angle is poor
|
| The whole point is that selective attention can make seeing
| even very obvious things difficult.
|
| > it's so hard to tell but I'd honestly be surprised if too
| many people fell for the original today.
|
| I used it on a class full of middle school science students
| two years ago. 21 out of 24 missed it in the first class. 5
| out of 24 in the second, though they insisted no one warned
| them :D
| [deleted]
| andersentobias wrote:
| Are there any good books on this topic?
| randcraw wrote:
| "Thinking Fast and Slow" seems to cover some of the same
| ground, especially Kahneman's and Tverski's Type II or slow
| thinking, though I think they approach thinking more as a means
| to solve problems (i.e. decision making/economics) rather than
| personality and how one sees the world (i.e. perception,
| attitude, and cognition). But Kahneman does discuss one's
| personal willingness to employ Type II, which should intersect
| with NFC.
| jboynyc wrote:
| Perhaps _Rationality and the Reflective Mind_ by Keith
| Stanovich (OUP, 2010).
| https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341140.001.0001
|
| There are some other interesting references in this blog post:
| https://culturecog.blog/2021/06/15/a-sociology-of-thinking-d...
| civilized wrote:
| I clicked on "elaboration" and I feel myself about to go down the
| wiki rabbit hole...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaboration_likelihood_model
| lelandfe wrote:
| These are some of the worst graphics I've seen on Wikipedia,
| hah:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elaboration_Likelihood_Mo...
|
| Looking like a high school Powerpoint presentation.
| masswerk wrote:
| But I found this one neat (even with that awful, as in non-
| existent, letter spacing):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaboration_likelihood_model#/.
| ..
|
| There was a time, when infographics used to be artistic...
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(page generated 2023-03-02 23:00 UTC)