Wason Selection Task: What It Is And What It Shows About Reason
For millennia it has been considered that human beings are analytical and rational animals that we can hardly make mistakes when we think deeply and reasonedly about a problem, whether mathematical or logical.
Although there may be cultural and educational differences, the truth is that this has come to be assumed as something inherent and characteristic of the human species. However, to what extent is this true?
Peter C. Wason had the fortune, or misfortune depending on how you look at it, to verify with a very simple task that this was, quite simply, not entirely true. With a very easy task, called the Wason selection task this researcher was able to observe how many of our apparently analytical decisions are not.
Here we are going to explain what this task consists of, how it is solved and to what extent the context influences its correct resolution.
Let’s imagine that there are four cards on a table. Each one has a number on one side and a letter on the other. Let’s say that at this moment the cards are placed in such a way that they look like this:
ED 2 9
They tell us that if there is the letter E on one side, an even number will be found on the other, in this case, 2. What two cards should we raise to confirm or deny this hypothesis?
If your answer is the first and third cards, you are wrong. But don’t be discouraged, since only 10% of the people who are presented with this task answer correctly. The correct action was to turn the first and last of the cards, since they are the ones that allow us to know if the previous statement is true or not. This is because when the card E is raised it is checked to see if there is an even number on the other side. If this were not the case, the statement would not be correct.
This example presented here is the task proposed by Peter Cathcart Wason in 1966 and is what is called the Wason Selection Task. It is a logical puzzle in which people’s reasoning abilities are tested. Human thought follows a series of steps to reach conclusions. We develop a series of approaches whose premises allow us to reach conclusions.
There are two types of reasoning: deductive and inductive. The first is that which occurs when all the initial information allows us to reach the final conclusion, while in the case of inductive reasoning there is specific information that allows us to obtain new information, but in non-absolute terms. In the case of Wason’s task, The type of reasoning that is applied is deductive, also called conditional reasoning. Thus, when solving the task, the following must be taken into account:
Card D should not be picked up because, regardless of whether or not it has an even number on the other side, the statement is not denied. That is, they have told us that on the other side of the letter E there should be an even number, but they have not told us at any time that any other letter cannot have that same type of number.
The card with the 2 should not be picked up since if there is an E on the other side it verifies the statement, but it would be redundant since we would have already done it when picking up the first card. If there is no E on the other side, it does not refute the statement, since it has not been said that an even number must have the letter E on the other side.
Yes, the last face with the 9 must be lifted because, if an E is found on the other side, it refutes the statement, since it means that it is not true that in every card with the letter E there is an even number on the other side. .
The fact that most people fail the classic Wason task is due to matching bias (matching bias). This bias causes people to turn those cards that only confirm what is said in the statement, without thinking about those that could falsify what is said in it. This is somewhat shocking, given that the task itself is quite simple, but it is shown in a way that, if the statement is abstract, makes one fall into the previously mentioned deception.
This is why the Wason selection task is probably one of the most researched experimental paradigms of all time, since it challenges in a somewhat frustrating way the way in which human beings reason. In fact, Wason himself, in an article published in 1968, stated that the results of his experiment, which we remember were only 10% correct, were disturbing.
It has been assumed throughout history that the human species is characterized by reasoning analytically, however, this task demonstrates that, On many occasions, the decisions that are made are made in a completely irrational way.
Context changes everything: content effect
When this test was presented in a decontextualized way, that is, speaking in terms of numbers and letters as is the case here, the investigation showed very poor results. Most people answered incorrectly. However, if the information is presented with something from real life, the percentages of success change.
This was verified in 1982 by Richard Griggs and James Cox, who reformulated Wason’s task as follows.
They asked participants to imagine that they were police officers and that they were entering a bar. His task was to check which minors were consuming alcohol and, therefore, committing an infraction. In the place there were people drinking, people who did not drink alcohol, people under 18 and people over 18. The question that was asked to the participants was which two groups of people should be questioned to do the job well and faster way.
In this case, about 75% answered correctly, saying that the only way to ensure that the aforementioned infraction was not being committed was to ask the group of minors and the group of people who consumed alcoholic beverages.
Another example that shows how the context makes one more efficient in answering this task is the one proposed by Asensio, MartÃn-Cordero, GarcÃa-Madruga and Recio in 1990, in which instead of alcoholic beverages they talked about vehicles. If a person drives a car, then he must be over 18 years old. Putting the participants the following four cases:
Car / Bicycle / Person over 18 / Person under 18
As in the previous case, here it is clear that the car card and the Person under 18 must be turned over. In this case, 90% answered correctly. Although the task in this case is the same, confirming or falsifying a statement, here, as there is contextualized information, it is faster and it is clearer what must be done to answer correctly.
This is when we talk about the content effect, that is, the way in which human beings reason not only depends on the structure of the problem, but also on its content, whether or not it is contextualized and, therefore. Therefore, we can relate it to real life problems.
The conclusions drawn from these new versions of Wason’s task were that, when reasoning, certain errors are made. This is due to more attention is paid to superficial features, especially those that limit themselves to confirming the abstract hypothesis posed. The context and information of the exercise affect the correct resolution of the exercise because understanding is more important than the syntax of the statement.
