Descriptive or normative reasoning?
Normative accounts of human performance in thinking, reasoning, and problem solving describe how people ought to perform on a particular task, based on logical principles or other theoretical standards (Kahneman & Tversky, 2019). Comparative accounts, on the other hand, describe what people do on the task based upon empirical observations. Syllogistic reasoning is an example of reasoning. It involves drawing conclusions from two premises. A normative account would show the best performance, using principles of logic deduction. While a descriptive account would report how the people perform the task, using empirical research data. One example is that a normative account could state that people should be able solve syllogisms according to certain logical principles. A descriptive account, on the other hand, might say that people sometimes make mistakes even when they are following logically valid conclusions (Evans 2002). Risk assessment is another example of decision-making tasks. This involves evaluating both the likelihood and possible consequences of various actions. A normative account might be used to describe the best performance in this task. This is based on utility maximization and probability theory, while descriptive accounts are used to describe actual results based upon empirical research. For example, a normative account might state that people ought to make decisions that maximize expected utility, while a descriptive account might report that people often exhibit biases and heuristics that deviate from this standard (Kahneman & Tversky, 2019). Cont…
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