Editing Wason selection task (section)

{{short description|Test in the study of deductive reasoning}}
[[Image:Wason selection task cards.svg|upright=1.35|right|thumb|Each card has a number on one side and color on the other. Which card or cards must be turned over to test the idea that if a card shows an even number on one face, then its opposite face is blue? <!-- BE CAREFUL ABOUT CHANGING THIS CAPTION. The whole point of the Wason task is to demonstrate that people make mistakes when thinking about this stuff; several past version of the caption have... made mistakes in thinking about this stuff.-->]]
The '''Wason selection task''' (or '''''four-card problem''''') is a [[logic puzzle]] devised by [[Peter Cathcart Wason]] in 1966.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Wason | first1 = P. C. | year = 1968 | title = Reasoning about a rule | journal = Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology | volume = 20 | issue = 3| pages = 273–281 | doi=10.1080/14640746808400161| pmid = 5683766 | s2cid = 1212273 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last=Wason | first=P. C. | author-link=Peter Cathcart Wason | editor=Foss, B. M. | title=New horizons in psychology|volume=1 | year=1966 | location=Harmondsworth | publisher=Penguin | chapter=Reasoning|lccn=66005291 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | author=Wason, P. C. | author-link=Peter Cathcart Wason | title=Natural and contrived experience in a reasoning problem | journal=Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology | year=1971 | volume=23 | pages= 63–71 | doi=10.1080/00335557143000068 | last2=Shapiro | first2=Diana | s2cid=7903333 }}</ref> It is one of the most famous tasks in the study of [[deductive reasoning]].<ref name="Manktelow1999">{{cite book |last=Manktelow |first=K. I. |title=Reasoning and Thinking |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6XpBCZDcCtIC&pg=PA8 |year=1999 |publisher=Psychology Press |isbn=978-0-86377-708-0 |page=8 |quote=The Wason selection task has often been claimed to be the single most investigated experimental paradigm in the psychology of reasoning.}}</ref> An example of the puzzle is:
{{quote|You are shown a set of four cards placed on a table, each of which has a number on one side and a color on the other. The visible faces of the cards show 3, 8, blue and red. Which card(s) must you turn over in order to test that if a card shows an even number on one face, then its opposite face is blue?}}

A response that identifies a card that need not be inverted, or that fails to identify a card that needs to be inverted, is incorrect. The original task dealt with numbers (even, odd) and letters (vowels, consonants).

The test is of special interest because people have a hard time solving it in most scenarios but can usually solve it correctly in certain contexts. In particular, researchers have found that the puzzle is readily solved when the imagined context is policing a social rule.