ABSTRACT

Focusing is a pervasive phenomenon occurring in reasoning and decision making, which has been thoroughly described by Legrenzi, Girotto, and Johnson-Laird (1993). It consists in the fact that reasoners seem to restrict their thoughts to what is explicitly represented in their mental models. Legrenzi and his colleagues have demonstrated that this phenomenon is a very general one, and concerns such domains as deductive reasoning, decision making and counterfactual thinking. Focusing is believed to be an inevitable consequence of the use of models in reasoning and depends on the fact that individuals construct very few explicit models when reasoning, focus on these models, and ignore other alternatives. However, this effect can be inhibited. In the above cited article, Legrenzi et al. also propose, and demonstrate, that the effects of focusing can be reduced by any manipulation that leads individuals to flesh out alternative models.