Counterintuitive

About: Counterintuitive is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 460 publications have been published within this topic receiving 14364 citations. The topic is also known as: counterintuitive & surprising.

From Neuropsychology to Mental Structure

Abstract: As a cognitive neuropsychologist, Tim Shallice considers the general question of what can be learned about the operation of the normal cognitive system from the study of the cognitive difficulties arising from neurological damage and disease. He distinguishes two types of theories of normal function - primarily modular and primary non-modular - and argues that the problems of making valid inferences about normal function from studies of brain-damaged subjects are more severe for the latter. He first analyzes five well-researched areas in which some modularity can be assumed: short-term memory, reading, writing, visual perception, and the relation between input and output language processing. His aim is to introduce the methods about normal function mirror ones derived directly from studies of normal subjects and indeed at times preceded them. He then more theoretically examines these inferences, from group studies and individual case studies to modular and non-modular systems. Finally, he considers five areas where theories of normal function are relatively undeveloped and neuropsychology provides counterintuitive phenomena and guides to theory-building: the organization of semantic systems, visual attention, concentration and will, episodic memory, and consciousness.

Strategy through the Option Lens: An Integrated View of Resource Investments and the Incremental-Choice Process

Abstract: This article develops an option-theoretic perspective for organizational strategic management. Grounded in the basic intuition that people seek to “keep options open” in situations that involve an unforeseeable future, and supported by theory in financial economics, this view is a recent development in strategy. The theory integrates resource allocation, sense making, organizational learning, and strategic positioning in a unified framework, and it provides a new explanation for some counterintuitive empirical findings.

All models are wrong: reflections on becoming a systems scientist†

Abstract: Thoughtful leaders increasingly recognize that we are not only failing to solve the persistent problems we face, but are in fact causing them. System dynamics is designed to help avoid such policy resistance and identify high-leverage policies for sustained improvement. What does it take to be an effective systems thinker, and to teach system dynamics fruitfully? Understanding complex systems requires mastery of concepts such as feedback, stocks and flows, time delays, and nonlinearity. Research shows that these concepts are highly counterintuitive and poorly understood. It also shows how they can be taught and learned. Doing so requires the use of formal models and simulations to test our mental models and develop our intuition about complex systems. Yet, though essential, these concepts and tools are not sufficient. Becoming an effective systems thinker also requires the rigorous and disciplined use of scientific inquiry skills so that we can uncover our hidden assumptions and biases. It requires respect and empathy for others and other viewpoints. Most important, and most difficult to learn, systems thinking requires understanding that all models are wrong and humility about the limitations of our knowledge. Such humility is essential in creating an environment in which we can learn about the complex systems in which we are embedded and work effectively to create the world we truly desire. The paper is based on the talk the author delivered at the 2002 International System Dynamics Conference upon presentation of the Jay W. Forrester Award. Copyright  2002 John Wiley & Sons,

Religion's evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion

Abstract: Religion is not an evolutionary adaptation per se, but a recurring cultural by-product of the complex evolutionary landscape that sets cognitive, emotional, and material conditions for ordinary human interactions. Religion exploits only ordinary cognitive processes to passionately display costly devotion to counterintuitive worlds governed by supernatural agents. The conceptual founda- tions of religion are intuitively given by task-specific panhuman cognitive domains, including folkmechanics, folkbiology, and folkpsy- chology. Core religious beliefs minimally violate ordinary notions about how the world is, with all of its inescapable problems, thus en- abling people to imagine minimally impossible supernatural worlds that solve existential problems, including death and deception. Here the focus is on folkpsychology and agency. A key feature of the supernatural agent concepts common to all religions is the triggering of an "Innate Releasing Mechanism," or "agency detector," whose proper (naturally selected) domain encompasses animate objects rele- vant to hominid survival - such as predators, protectors, and prey - but which actually extends to moving dots on computer screens, voices in wind, and faces on clouds. Folkpsychology also crucially involves metarepresentation, which makes deception possible and threatens any social order. However, these same metacognitive capacities provide the hope and promise of open-ended solutions through representations of counterfactual supernatural worlds that cannot be logically or empirically verified or falsified. Because religious be- liefs cannot be deductively or inductively validated, validation occurs only by ritually addressing the very emotions motivating religion. Cross-cultural experimental evidence encourages these claims.

Fuzzy-Trace Theory and False Memory

Abstract: A key problem confronting theories of false memory is that false-memory phenomena are so diverse: Some are characteristic of controlled laboratory tasks, others of everyday life; some occur for traumatic events with legal consequences, others for innocuous events; some are characteristic of one developmental level, others of another developmental level. Fuzzy-trace theory explains false memories via a small set of principles that implement a single representational distinction. Those principles generate new predictions, some of which are counterintuitive.