Final answer:
Cognitive psychology investigates the processes of thinking and knowing, focusing on how active cognitive functions like perception, memory, and judgment shape our experiences and decisions. It highlights both the efficiency of natural cognitive processes, such as heuristics, and the potential for error through cognitive biases.
Step-by-step explanation:
The cognitive view suggests that thinking and knowing are active processes where the brain is constantly at work, perceiving, processing, planning, organizing, and remembering. Cognition involves various mental processes such as perception, knowledge, problem-solving, judgment, language, and memory, which are studied in the field of cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychologists explore how we integrate, organize, and utilize our conscious cognitive experiences alongside the unconscious work that our brains are performing. Cognitive biases, such as heuristics and the Dunning-Kruger effect, arise when the brain relies on mental shortcuts that can result in less-than-optimal or even incorrect decisions. While these biases are a result of the brain's natural and efficient operation, they can mislead us away from accurate perceptions or judgments.
Cognitive psychology also examines the role of schemata, which are clusters of related concepts that help us quickly organize thinking and behave appropriately in various situations. Moreover, from an evolutionary standpoint, our brains have been shaped by natural selection to be efficient inference machines, which are beneficial for survival but not always accurate when it comes to seeking truth or scientific knowledge.