1. Will appeal as a primer to both students and professionals. 2. Each chapter includes further reading as a springboard to more in-depth study

Types of Thinking provides a basic grounding in the psychology of thinking for undergraduate students with little previous knowledge of cognitive psychology. This clear, well-structured overview explores the practical aspects and applications of everyday thinking, creative thinking, logical and scientific thinking, intelligent thinking and machine thinking. It also explores 'failures of thinking', the biases and shortcuts that sometimes lead our thinking astray.
The author tackles big ideas in an accessible manner and in an entertaining style, ensuring that Types of Thinking will be attractive not only to students but also to teachers organising and planning courses, as well as the lay reader.

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Human Thinking: The Basics provides an essential introduction into how we develop thoughts, the types of reasoning we engage in, and how our thinking can be tailored by subconscious processing.

Beginning with the fundamentals, the book examines the mental processes that shape our thoughts, the trajectory of how thought evolved within the animal kingdom and the stages of development of thinking throughout childhood. Robertson insightfully explains the effectiveness of political slogans and advertisements in engaging shallow information processing and the effortful, analytical processing required in critical thinking. Delving into fascinating topics such as magical thinking in the form of religion and superstition, fake news, and motivated ignorance, the book explains the discrepancy between reality and our internal mental representations, the influence of semantics on deductive reasoning and the error-prone, yet adaptive nature of biases.

Containing student-friendly features including end of chapter summaries, demonstrative puzzles, simple figures, and further reading lists, this book will be essential reading for all students of thinking and reasoning.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Thinking: what is it and where does it come from?

1. What is ‘thinking’?

2. Evolution of thinking

Part 2: Thinking as reasoning

3. Problem-solving

4. Rational thinking

Part 3: When thinking goes awry

5. Biases, errors, and heuristics

6. Society made me do it

7. The confabulating mind

Part 4: Motivated Cognition

8. Mistaken beliefs about the world

9. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing like the truth

10. Magical thinking

"Types of Thinking" provides a basic grounding in the psychology of thinking for undergraduate students with little previous knowledge of cognitive psychology. This clear, well-structured overview explores the practical aspects and applications of everyday thinking, creative thinking, logical and scientific thinking, intelligent thinking and machine thinking. It also explores "failures of thinking," the slips of action that can lead to plane crashes and industrial accidents. Influences on decision-making such as motivation, arousal and emotion are examined, as well as the differences between "deep" and "surface" thought, "lateral" thinking, and the effect of negative transfer. Written in an accessible and engaging style, "Types of Thinking" will be attractive to students and teachers of psychology as well as to the lay reader.

The way that we assess and overcome problems is an essential part of everyday life. Problem Solving provides a clear introduction to the underlying mental processes involved in solving problems. Drawing on research from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, it examines the methods and techniques used by both novices and experts in familiar and unfamiliar situations. This edition has been comprehensively updated throughout, and now features cutting-edge content on creative problem solving, insight and neuroscience. Each chapter is written in an accessible way, and contains a range of student-friendly features such as activities, chapter summaries and further reading. The book also provides clear examples of studies and approaches that help the reader fully understand important and complex concepts in greater detail. Problem Solving fully engages the reader with the difficulties and methodologies associated with problem solving. This book will be of great use to undergraduate students of cognitive psychology, education and neuroscience, as well as readers and professionals with an interest in problem solving.

The way that we assess and overcome problems is an essential part of everyday life. Problem Solving provides a clear introduction to the underlying mental processes involved in solving problems. Drawing on research from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, it examines the methods and techniques used by both novices and experts in familiar and unfamiliar situations. This edition has been comprehensively updated throughout, and now features cutting-edge content on creative problem solving, insight and neuroscience. Each chapter is written in an accessible way, and contains a range of student-friendly features such as activities, chapter summaries and further reading. The book also provides clear examples of studies and approaches that help the reader fully understand important and complex concepts in greater detail. Problem Solving fully engages the reader with the difficulties and methodologies associated with problem solving. This book will be of great use to undergraduate students of cognitive psychology, education and neuroscience, as well as readers and professionals with an interest in problem solving.