PSYC204 PSYCHOLOGY OF REASONING AND THINKING
Cheryl Lim Xin Jing (BSocSc Class of 2018)
How do we make better choices in life? Does an optimal decision really exist? Often times, we have difficulty evaluating and making choices because we fear the impact of a bad decision or of taking risks. Psychology of Reasoning and Thinking aims to help us better analyse the choices we face in our everyday lives by developing a better understanding of how we make judgements and decisions. The course also fosters confidence to help you make better trade-offs, and equips you with the skills necessary to sift through the overwhelming number of choices we are often faced with today. With this course, we learn to identify the various cognitive biases we face when making decisions, and how we can circumvent these to arrive at an optimal decision.
To enable you to become a better decision-maker, the course covers topics such as judgments of risk and uncertainty, emotional decision-making, heuristics and biases, and creative thinking processes. On top of that, these theories are connected to practical scenarios where we learn to apply them, such as negotiation, consumer behaviour, and team dynamics. This allows students to not only become aware of the various subconscious mental processes they undergo, but also how they can take advantage of that knowledge to make better choices.
One interesting aspect of this course was how Prof. Tsai Ming-Hong put the theories into perspective for us through in-class exercises, where we experienced first-hand the thinking processes that we studied, which he then analysed and evaluated together with us. This gave us the chance to experience how the theories we learnt in class can be applied to improve the quality of our reasoning and thinking skills, getting us more involved in what we were learning, rather than remaining detached from the lessons.
While the name of the course might not endear you to enrol in the class, do not let it fool you into thinking that it is a monotonous and dreary course. On the contrary, the content of this course was stimulating and gave me a much greater insight into the inner workings of the human mind, and how we tend to fall back on what is most comfortable to us. Prof. Tsai did an extremely good job in fostering curiosity in the subject and further enhanced learning of the various concepts through videos and examples. He even provided advice on how we could use the concepts we learnt to increase the level of happiness in our daily lives. With his enthusiasm and openness to discussion, Professor Tsai was a positive influence in my learning about the subject.
Psychology of Reasoning and Thinking was by far the most applicable psychology course I have taken yet, largely because of how applicable it was and how it was not made up of some obscure set of theories that were interesting to learn but would rarely be used. I find myself applying some of the theories I learnt in class (especially the ones to make me happier!) in my daily life. I believe this course would definitely help guide you in your life decisions, whether big or small. For those of you who have an interest in psychology because you want to dissect the way people think and behave, then this course is definitely worth considering!