Peter Cathcart Wason
British psychologist (1924-2003) · United Kingdom · On the map · Academics · Died at 78
Peter Cathcart Wason was an English cognitive psychologist at University College, London, who pioneered the psychology of reasoning. He sought to explain why people consistently commit logical errors.
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He designed problems and tests to demonstrate these behaviours, such as the Wason selection task, the THOG problem and the 2-4-6 problem. He also coined the term "confirmation bias" to describe the tendency for people to immediately favor information that validates their preconceptions, hypotheses and personal beliefs regardless of whether they are true or not.
