Replication and Pedagogy in the History of Psychology VI: Egon Brunswik on Perception and Explicit Reasoning

Egon Brunswik (1903–1955) first made an interesting distinction between perception and explicit reasoning, arguing that perception included quick estimates of an object’s size, nearly always resulting in good approximations in uncertain environments, whereas explicit reasoning, while better at achieving exact estimates, could often fail by wide margins. An experiment conducted by Brunswik to investigate these ideas was never published and the only available information is a figure of the results presented in a posthumous book in 1956. We replicated and extended his study to gain insight into the procedures Brunswik used in obtaining his results. Explicit reasoning resulted in fewer errors, yet more extreme ones than perception. Brunswik’s graphical analysis of the results led to different conclusions, however, than did a modern statistically-based analysis.

Eileen DelanyEmail:

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Jeremy Athy   is a graduate student in cognitive psychology at Bowling Green State University, where he received his M.A. His research centers on problems of object recognition. Jeff Friedrich   was a graduate student at Bowling Green State University. He received his BS in psychology and human development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and his MA from Bowling Green State University. His major research interests are in human judgment and decision making. Eileen Delany   is a graduate student in clinical psychology at Bowling Green State University. She specializes in Health Psychology and is interested in conducting research and working in clinical settings.