Judgment (psychology)

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In this article, judging - in contrast to the article Judgment (logic) - is considered from a cognitive psychological perspective. Judging from this perspective is an everyday process of thinking . The person making the judgment assigns a judgment object (person, situation, object, abstract constructs etc.) a value (good, questionable, always ...) on a judgment dimension. The resulting and explicitly expressed result is the judgment. Judging is therefore the evaluation of an object of judgment. Judging can also express the subjective expectation, e.g. B. whether an event will occur or not. This type of judgment is called a probability judgment.

Judging enables people to effectively adapt their actions to the requirements of the environment and to achieve goals. The Decide (d. H. Of at least two alternatives to choose), and the choices can be difficult or appear (see also decision under uncertainty ).

Judgment dimensions

A judgment dimension can be imagined as a scale that, depending on the judgment object and the form of judgment (evaluation or expectation), can be given appropriate endpoints:

  • Assessment dimension: good - bad; goal-hindering - goal-promoting; serious - harmless ...
  • Probability dimension: certain - uncertain; always never …

Judgment dimensions can be of various kinds. So z. B. specify the estimate of the probability of occurrence of an event on a very fine scale (0-100%) (e.g .: rain probability), whereas the judgment about, for example, the truth value of a statement is made in a dichotomous classification; this scale has the endpoints “true” and “false”.

Inductive and deductive judgments

Inductive judgments

In the case of inductive judgments, general conclusions are drawn from the individual case. For example, when observing certain performances, conclusions can be drawn about the intelligence of the person. Generalization and categorization can be cited as a further example. Here, for example, observing a white swan leads to the assumption that all swans are white.

Deductive judgments

In deductive judgments, conclusions are drawn from the general to the particular or the individual case. The deduction is also called logical inference because it is possible to derive a new statement from at least two statements. Example: Hermann lives in the water

  • Statement: "All fish live in the water."
  • Statement: "My goldfish Hermann is a fish."
  • logical conclusion: "Hermann also lives in the water."

Judge by content areas

Judgments can be separated from each other according to content areas.

Evaluative judgments

In evaluative judgments, the judgment object is rated on an evaluative dimension, for example "good - bad", "positive - negative" or the like. Evaluative judgments enable us to distinguish things we like from those we don't. Evaluative judgments are used in social psychology v. a. examined under the heading Hiring .

Predictive judgments

Predictive judgments relate to predicting future events. As a rule, it is about assessing the likelihood that certain events will occur. Predictive judgments are v. a. investigated in decision-making research, since it is only the combination of the value of an option that this value is achieved that results in the decision-relevant benefit of an option (see expectation-times-value models ). Example: The profit of 1 million euros is rated as not very high if the profit probability is only 0.00001%.

Frequency judgments

Judgments about the frequency with which events have occurred in the past are of great importance for estimating probabilities . Frequency judgments are v. a. studied in memory psychology .

Truth judgments

A large part of thought psychology deals with the question of how people come to judgments about the correctness or incorrectness of logical conclusions. Typical examples are, for example, classical syllogisms , which are understood to be simple final figures that consist of two premises and a conclusion. Example:

  • "The Tour de France can only be won with doping."
  • "The cyclist X doped."
  • the logically admissible conclusion could be: "The cyclist X has won the Tour de France."

Social judgments

In social judgments is judgments about people or about themselves The social judgment is characterized by many peculiarities, including.:

  • that many of the characteristics assessed in social terms cannot really be measured,
  • they usually have to be inferred from a large number of clues and
  • that the judge and the judgment object can interact with each other.

For example, in order to be able to assess a person's trustworthiness, we need to observe them in situations in which this attribute could have an influence on their behavior. Under certain circumstances, we can infer the trustworthiness of a person from their behavior.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Betsch, Tilmann, Joachim Funke, Henning Plessner: Thinking - Judging, Deciding - Problem Solving. General Psychology for Bachelor's . Berlin 2011, p. 2 .
  2. ↑ Betsch, Tilmann; Joachim Funke, Henning Plessner: Thinking - Judging, Deciding - Problem Solving. General Psychology for Bachelor's . Berlin 2011, p. 12 .
  3. ↑ Betsch, Tilmann, Joachim Funke, Henning Plesner: Thinking - Judging, Deciding - Problem Solving. General Psychology for Bachelor's . Berlin 2011.
  4. ↑ What do deductive and inductive thinking mean? Retrieved December 13, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Betsch, Tilmann, Joachim Funke, Henning Plesner: Thinking - Judging, Deciding - Problem Solving. General Psychology for Bachelor's . Berlin 2011, p. 14-15 .