The Effect Of Social Contract And Probability Factor On Conditional Reasoning

Reasoning is one of the most cognitive activities. The study about reasoning play an important role in exploring the essence of the human beings'cognitive activity and promoting the development of cognitive psychology and educational psychology .Four card selection task was widely applied in conditional reasoning. In this paper, first of all, a review was presented on the history of researches on conditional reasoning, and the social contract theory and information gain model was introduced in detail. Social contract theory, on the basis of evolutionary theory, which suggests that humans have an evolved cognitive specialization for reasoning about social exchange. The information gain model, based on Bayesian, argued that participants' behavior reflects a strategy of optimizing the expected amount of information gained by turning each card. To decide which is true between social contract theory and information gain model,four studies were designed to explore the fact.In study 1 and study 2, we manipulated the probability of antecedents (p) and consequents (q) in providing objective probabilities. Study 1 use standard social contract and study 2 use switched social contract. The result showed that there was distinct social contract effect on resolving the selection task. In addition, there was no reliable difference in subjects'response between high probability and low probability, which supported the social contract theory.In study 3 and study 4, we manipulated the probability of antecedents (p) and consequents (q) in providing subject probabilities. Study 3 use standard social contract and study 4 use switched social contract. The result showed that there was distinct social contract effect and no reliable difference in subjects'response between high probability and low probability. The results were again consistent with social contract theory.In a word, the experimental results support the social contract theory, we maybe have some domain specific modules with social exchange. At the end, we prospect the future research to aim at the limitations of this study.