Hi, again, and more fun to post! This is a narrow slice of a much larger presentation done as a part of observing small group behaviors and dynamics. I chose to zero in on how we use inference which is the interpretation we apply to our observations. Hope you enjoy.

 

My purpose in creating a focus about inference was that it struck me how easily we are influenced by stereotypes and how we interpret individual behavior based on our own experiences. Delving into this from a research perspective plunged me into some very deep waters. Just as an example, the concepts of inference are a basis for artificial intelligence.  When you think about it, that makes perfect sense, but still, deep waters!

Our original group presentation:

 

Notes:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3359847/

Note: This is a pre-editing copy of a chapter that appears in  D. Gilbert, S. Fiske & G. Lindsey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (4h ed.), Vol. 2. (pp. 41-88). Boston: McGraw-Hill.  http://www.columbia.edu/~rmk7/PDF/HSP.pdf
Language and Social Behavior.  Robert M. Krauss and Chi-Yue Chiu, Columbia University and The University of Hong-Kong

“Just as language use pervades social life, the elements of social life constitute an intrinsic part of the way language is used. . . . How these participants define the social situation, their perceptions of what others know, think and believe, and the claims they make about their own and others’ identities will affect the form and content of their acts of speaking. pg2”

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-010-1126-6_2#page-1

The problem of the Rationality of Fallible Methods of Inference by K. Adjukiewicz comes about to “the problem of justification of induction.” p13

“We call inference the activity of the mind consisting in that on the basis of accepting with some degree of certitude sentences calles premises, the acceptance of another sentence, called conclusion, is reached with some, but always greater than before, degree of certitude.”

http://mentalmodels.princeton.edu/papers/2013procsofinf.pdf

Sangeet Khemlani & P. N. Johnson-Laird (2012): The processes of inference, Argument & Computation, Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, Naval Research Lab, Washington, DC 20375, USA; Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.

DOI:10.1080/19462166.2012.674060
: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19462166.2012.674060

http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Language%20Behavior

“Language Behavior describes a behaviorist theory on how humans develop language. B.F. Skinner was a behaviorist who was interested in language acquisition in humans. He proposed that language, like any other skill, was gained by reinforcing responses from the environment. It’s a process of building language skills on top of each other as a result from interacting with the environment. ”

http://www.simplypsychology.org/katz-braly.html

“The use of stereotypes is a major way in which we simplify our social world; since they reduce the amount of processing (i.e. thinking) we have to do when we meet a new person. By stereotyping we infer that a person has a whole range of characteristics and abilities that we assume all members of that group have. Stereotypes lead to social categorization, which is one of the reasons for prejudice attitudes (i.e. “them” and “us” mentality) which leads to in-groups and out-groups.”