Learning psychology from riddles: The case of stumpers

Maya Bar-Hillel; Tom Noah; Shane Frederick

doi:10.1017/s193029750000886x

Learning psychology from riddles: The case of stumpers

Maya Bar-Hillel
, Tom Noah
, Shane Frederick

Department of Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

29 Scopus citations

Abstract

Riddles can teach us psychology when we stop to consider the psychological principles that make them “work”. This paper studies a particular class of riddles that we call stumpers, and provides analysis of the various principles (some familiar, some novel) that inhibit most people from finding the correct solution – or any solution – even though they find the answers obvious ex post. We restrict our analysis to four stumpers, propose the psychological antecedents of each, and provide experimental support for our conjectures.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	112-122
Number of pages	11
Journal	Judgment and Decision Making
Volume	13
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/s193029750000886x
State	Published - Jan 2018

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018. The authors license this article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Keywords

Cognitive economy
Gender stereotypes
Grice
Representation
Riddles
Situation models

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1017/s193029750000886x

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Learning psychology from riddles: The case of stumpers

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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