Metacognition

From RationalWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Tell me about
your mother

Psychology
Icon psychology.svg
For our next session...
Popping into your mind

Metacognition is thinking about thinking. Understanding one's beliefs and thoughts, their mechanisms and processes.

Some examples of metacognition include meta-memory (including recognition of the fallibility of memory), monitoring one's learning/understanding.

Metacognition can act as a therapeutic tool, gifting one with the capacity for criticising and evaluating one's thoughts and beliefs. It holds them accountable to standards: normative and truth-evaluative. The errors people often make in pattern detection and attribution of causality (magical thinking, and pareidolia). Thoughts and beliefs — mental citizens, are the object of scrutiny.