Property Centrality Effect In Inductive Reasoning And Its Psychological Process

Inductive reasoning is the process in which one reasons from a specific to a general case or fact; and it intends to generalize and simplify knowledge and experience. Previous research on property effect mainly examined how property stability affected inductive reasoning. Property centrality effect is proposed after the property stability effect has been found. Property centrality effect is mean that people are more willing to project feature of high centrality from a base concept to a target concept, whereas poor performance is observed when one projects feature of less centrality. Property centrality effect is a new research area. Researches of it are not systemic at present, and we cannot depict and open out this effect itself and its mental process which involved.This study discussed the effect of different property centrality degrees to inductive reasoning by 3 experiments, and we analyzed mental process in detail. At the end of this article, we attempt to propose a new inductive reasoning model. The article aims to solve the two below questions: First, we try to make certain and perfect property centrality effect. Second, we are going to open out mental process driven by property induction process.The conclusions are as the following:1. There is property centrality effect in the process of inductive reasoning. Central property have more effect to inductive reasoning than other properties(less central property,least central property).2. The appearance of the effect was constrained by the similarity between premise and conclusion concepts. When the similarity is high, central property showed more inductive ability than less central property. With the decrease of similarity between premise and conclusion concepts, central property's inductive reasoning ability decrease also, whereas less central property's and least central property's inductive reasoning ability increase in turn. When premise and conclusion became no related at all, the inductive strength of least central property reached the highest level, while that of central property decreased the lowest level.3. Participants have different confidence for three properties in property induction. Generally speaking, as similarity level diminished, the confidence of participant showed a significant decreasing trend also.4. There is a psychological process guiding human beings in induction: Participants always compare the similarity of premise and conclusion object before choose which property for induction. When people reasoned in the higher similarity condition, they would consciously choose central property for induction reasoning. This was because similar objects may have many properties in common but it is the central properties that may decide the level of similarity between the two objects. Therefore, reasoning from central property would yield a more accurate result. Also, the more similar the condition was, the more willing a participant would be to project from central property. With the decrease of similarity level between the two objects, the decidable effect of central property becomes weak gradually. So participant will reduce the choice of centrality for inductive reasoning, and strengthen gradually the choices of less central property,least central property, and then differences among central property,less central property and least central property reduce gradually. When similarity decrease a certain level, participant may thought central property should has not any effect for induction of conclusion, so they will give up central property confidently and choose other properties of common property, because it appears to be an inappropriate, or even a gibberish to use central property to make judgments. But participant are not sure that making other property is absolutely accurate, it's only a guess.