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Wason (1966) Selection Task

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

Synonyms

The four-card problem; The Wason selection task; Wason’s four-card problem; Wason’s selection task

Definition

The Wason (1966) selection task is a reasoning task based on the logic of conditional rules and their violation.

Wason’s selection task is a problem designed to explore the ways people reason with conditional statements, those that can be expressed using “if.” It is one of a suite of reasoning problems invented by the British psychologist Peter Wason (1924–2003) and arose from his interest in, and curiosity about, firstly, the use of conditionals in both everyday and official language and, secondly, a tendency he had uncovered in earlier research using another of his tasks for people to confirm their beliefs rather than test them through attempted falsification. (This story is detailed in Wason and Johnson-Laird 1972, a monograph reviewing the authors’ early work on reasoning.) Wason (1964) had previously observed that experimental participants did not adhere to the...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Ken Manktelow

Authors
  1. Ken Manktelow
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Correspondence to Ken Manktelow .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  2. Rochester, MI, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Kevin Kniffin

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Manktelow, K. (2019). Wason (1966) Selection Task. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3439-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3439-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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