Think About
Your Thinking
Mental
Models
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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Do you agree?
• Pretty girls are often dumb.
• Students in the leading universities are more
intelligent.
• Students with good grades are also wellbehaved.
• Good grades guarantee big money in the
future.
• Wealthy people live luxuriously.
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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Warm-up Activity
Draw a scientist on a piece of paper.
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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Is This How You Would Picture a
Scientist?
Is it like him?
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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You are Not Alone!
The majority of people (be it a child, a teen or an
adult), when asked to draw a scientist, they would
include the following features in their paintings:
 Male
 Wearing a white laboratory coat
 Wearing a pair of glasses
 Messy hair and thick eyebrows
 Alone
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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What are Mental Models?
Mental models are concepts that are unconscious
and have become “automatic”.
We hardly ever stop to think over our “thinking
methods”.
When examining our thinking processes, we must
pay attention to the following three aspects:
 Assumptions
 Beliefs
 Biases
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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Why Do We Need to Think About
Our Thinking?
This is because we may:
 Not be aware we are making
assumptions
 Not be aware of our beliefs
 Hold negative view towards others
The above may lead to mistakes/unsound
judgements.
Take drawing a scientist as an example, we all tend to
have a set of rigid ideas about the features of a
scientist. These ideas are what we call mental models.
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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Other Examples of
Mental Models
• Pretty girls are often dumb.
• Students in the leading universities are more
intelligent.
• Students with good grades are also wellbehaved.
• Good grades guarantee big money in the
future.
• Wealthy people live luxuriously.
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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Is it Easy to Change One’s Mental Models?
 People tend to seek information that confirm their
prior beliefs.
 In other words, we do not want to evaluate
information that runs counter to what we believe
is true!
This is called Confirmation Bias.
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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Superstition:
Does Putting a Curse on Someone Actually Work?
 Suppose that we know we are
cursed, we will pay special
attention to our surroundings to
see if something unfortunate will
happen.
 Thus, the happening of such
events will confirm our belief that
the “curse works.”
 This is an example of
confirmation bias.
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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Stereotypes
We often have impressions about a group of
people based on the image of what the people in
that group are like. These impressions are deeprooted and can be:
 Wrong;
 Unreasonable;
 Or based on wrong thinking.
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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Practise & Use Critical Thinking More Often
 Examine your own mental model
 Avoid confirmation bias
 Use critical thinking in your
daily life
© EDB; D. Halpern, K. Ku, I. Ho, K.T. Hau
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