Metacognition On Decision Making

Let me ask you a question: What’s Elton John’s real name?

Now, there are three ways you might respond.

One: “I have absolutely no idea.”

Two: “Reginald Dwight, obviously!”

Three: “I know that I know that! It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t seem to remember it.”

The lesson? If you want to be a flexible, adaptive thinker, try and interact with people whose beliefs and opinions differ from yours. You don’t have to agree with everything they say – simply interacting with them will help boost your metacognitive sensitivity.

We can build on the metacognitive instincts hardwired into our brain by cultivating more explicit metacognitive strategies. Research has shown that some people are more naturally prone to metacognition than others; neuropsychologists call these people “metacognitively gifted.” But we’re all capab...

What happens when someone isn’t willing to engage with other people’s viewpoints? Log on to Twitter or Facebook and you’ll likely see for yourself. A skewed sense of self-awareness may be contributing to the increasingly extreme political content, at both ends of the spectrum, that is so prevalen...

Explaining a concept or articulating a process to someone else can make your own knowledge and limits explicit. There’s a phenomenon known as the illusion of explanatory depth – basically, we often think we know more than we actually do.

The Science Of Self Awareness 

We human being are self aware(?)

Unraveling the truth of self awareness through the light of science.

These days, this capacity for self-awareness is a field of neuroscientific study in its own right: the field of metacognition. Understanding metacognitive processes can actually help us think better, make sharper decisions, and avoid critical errors. Luckily, you don’t have to be a trained neuros...

We’re all self-aware to some degree. Our aptitude for metacognition is hardwired into our brains and many key metacognitive processes are actually performed automatically. If you’ve ever set a drink down on the table, missed the table by an inch or two, and reflexively caught your glass before it...

So, you might think you know how a lightbulb works but when you try and explain it out loud to someone else, you might quickly realize there are some crucial gaps in your understanding. What’s more, we humans have a weird quirk – we’re much more likely to identify and correct mistakes when other ...

People with poor metacognition skills are more likely to believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong, less likely to change their minds when presented with information that contradicts their beliefs, and less likely to search out new information on topics where they’ve already formed a...