Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended (...) to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions. (shrink)

An analytic cognitive style denotes a propensity to set aside highly salient intuitions when engaging in problem solving. We assess the hypothesis that an analytic cognitive style is associated with a history of questioning, altering, and rejecting supernatural claims, both religious and paranormal. In two studies, we examined associations of God beliefs, religious engagement, conventional religious beliefs and paranormal beliefs with performance measures of cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style. An analytic cognitive style negatively predicted both religious and paranormal beliefs (...) when controlling for cognitive ability as well as religious engagement, sex, age, political ideology, and education. Participants more willing to engage in analytic reasoning were less likely to endorse supernatural beliefs. Further, an association between analytic cognitive style and religious engagement was mediated by religious beliefs, suggesting that an analytic cognitive style negatively affects religious engagement via lower acceptance of conventional religious beliefs. Results for types of God belief indicate that the association between an analytic cognitive style and God beliefs is more nuanced than mere acceptance and rejection, but also includes adopting less conventional God beliefs, such as Pantheism or Deism. Our data are consistent with the idea that two people who share the same cognitive ability, education, political ideology, sex, age and level of religious engagement can acquire very different sets of beliefs about the world if they differ in their propensity to think analytically. (shrink)

This chapter sheds light on a response to experimental philosophy that has not yet received enough attention: the reflection defense. According to proponents of this defense, judgments about philosophical cases are relevant only when they are the product of careful, nuanced, and conceptually rigorous reflection. The chapter argues that the reflection defense is misguided: Five studies (N>1800) are presented, showing that people make the same judgments when they are primed to engage in careful reflection as they do in the conditions (...) standardly used by experimental philosophers. (shrink)

Three studies test eight hypotheses about (1) how judgment differs between people who ascribe greater vs. less moral relevance to choices, (2) how moral judgment is subject to task constraints that shift evaluative focus (to moral rules vs. to consequences), and (3) how differences in the propensity to rely on intuitive reactions affect judgment. In Study 1, judgments were affected by rated agreement with moral rules proscribing harm, whether the dilemma under consideration made moral rules versus consequences of choice salient, (...) and by thinking styles (intuitive vs. deliberative). In Studies 2 and 3, participants evaluated policy decisions to knowingly do harm to a resource to mitigate greater harm or to merely allow the greater harm to happen. When evaluated in isolation, approval for decisions to harm was affected by endorsement of moral rules and by thinking style. When both choices were evaluated simultaneously, total harm -- but not the do/allow distinction -- influenced rated approval. These studies suggest that moral rules play an important, but context-sensitive role in moral cognition, and offer an account of when emotional reactions to perceived moral violations receive less weight than consideration of costs and benefits in moral judgment and decision making. (shrink)

A major challenge for Dual Process Theories of reasoning is to predict the circumstances under which intuitive answers reached on the basis of Type 1 processing are kept or discarded in favour of analytic, Type 2 processing (Thompson 2009 ). We propose that a key determinant of the probability that Type 2 processes intervene is the affective response that accompanies Type 1 processing. This affective response arises from the fluency with which the initial answer is produced, such that fluently produced (...) answers give rise to a strong feeling of rightness. This feeling of rightness, in turn, determines the extent and probability with which Type 2 processes will be engaged. Because many of the intuitions produced by Type 1 processes are fluent, it is common for them to be accompanied by a strong sense of rightness. However, because fluency is poorly calibrated to objective difficulty, confidently held intuitions may form the basis of poor quality decisions. (shrink)

Humans have long been characterized as poor probabilistic reasoners when presented with explicit numerical information. Bayesian word problems provide a well-known example of this, where even highly educated and cognitively skilled individuals fail to adhere to mathematical norms. It is widely agreed that natural frequencies can facilitate Bayesian reasoning relative to normalized formats (e.g. probabilities, percentages), both by clarifying logical set-subset relations and by simplifying numerical calculations. Nevertheless, between-study performance on “transparent” Bayesian problems varies widely, and generally remains rather unimpressive. (...) We suggest there has been an over-focus on this representational facilitator (i.e. transparent problem structures) at the expense of the specific logical and numerical processing requirements and the corresponding individual abilities and skills necessary for providing Bayesian-like output given specific verbal and numerical input. We further suggest that understanding this task-individual pair could benefit from considerations from the literature on mathematical cognition, which emphasizes text comprehension and problem solving, along with contributions of online executive working memory, metacognitive regulation, and relevant stored knowledge and skills. We conclude by offering avenues for future research aimed at identifying the stages in problem solving at which correct versus incorrect reasoners depart, and how individual difference might influence this time point. (shrink)

In this response, we clarify several misunderstandings of the understanding/acceptance principle and defend our specific operationalization of that principle. We reiterate the importance of addressing the problem of rational task construal and we elaborate the notion of computational limitations contained in our target article. Our concept of thinking dispositions as variable intentional-level styles of epistemic and behavioral regulation is explained, as is its relation to the rationality debate. Many of the suggestions of the commentators for elaborating two-process models are easily (...) integrated into our generic dual-process account. We further explicate how we view the relation between System 1 and System 2 and evolutionary and normative rationality. We clarify our attempt to fuse the contributions of the cognitive ecologists with the insights of the original heuristics and biases researchers. (shrink)

This paper assessed whether belief in conspiracy theories was associated with a particularly cognitive style (worldview). The sample comprised 223 volunteers recruited via convenience sampling and included undergraduates, postgraduates, university employees and alumni. Respondents completed measures assessing a range of cognitive-perceptual factors (schizotypy, delusional ideation and hallucination proneness) and conspiratorial beliefs (general attitudes towards conspiracist thinking and endorsement of individual conspiracies). Positive symptoms of schizotypy, particularly the cognitive-perceptual factor, correlated positively with conspiracist beliefs. The best predictor of belief in conspiracies (...) was delusional ideation. Consistent with the notion of a coherent conspiratorial mindset, scores across conspiracy measures correlated strongly. Whilst findings supported the view that belief in conspiracies, within the sub-clinical population, was associated with a delusional thinking style, cognitive-perceptual factors in combination accounted for only 32% of the variance. (shrink)

Deliberative analysis enables us to weigh features, simulate futures, and arrive at good, tractable decisions. So why do we so often eschew deliberation, and instead rely on more intuitive, gut responses? We propose that intuition might be prescribed for some decisions because people’s folk theory of decision-making accords a special role to authenticity, which is associated with intuitive choice. Five pre-registered experiments find evidence in favor of this claim. In Experiment 1 (N = 654), we show that participants prescribe intuition (...) and deliberation as a basis for decisions differentially across domains, and that these prescriptions predict reported choice. In Experiment 2 (N = 555), we find that choosing intuitively vs. deliberately leads to different inferences concerning the decision-maker’s commitment and authenticity—with only inferences about the decision-maker’s authenticity showing variation across domains that matches that observed for the prescription of intuition in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3 (N = 631), we replicate our prior results and rule out plausible confounds. Finally, in Experiment 4 (N = 177) and Experiment 5 (N = 526), we find that an experimental manipulation of the importance of authenticity affects the prescribed role for intuition as well as the endorsement of expert human or algorithmic advice. These effects hold beyond previously recognized influences on intuitive vs. deliberative choice, such as computational costs, presumed reliability, objectivity, complexity, and expertise. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have revealed systematic errors in human reasoning. There is disagreement about what these errors indicate about human rationality, but one upshot seems clear: human reasoning does not seem to fit traditional views of human rationality. This concern about rationality has made its way through various fields and has recently caught the attention of philosophers. The concern is that if philosophers are prone to systematic errors in reasoning, then the integrity of philosophy would be threatened. In this paper, I (...) present some of the more famous work in cognitive science that has marshaled this concern. Then I present reasons to think that those with training in philosophy will be less prone to certain systematic errors in reasoning. The suggestion is that if philosophers could be shown to be less prone to such errors, then the worries about the integrity of philosophy could be constrained. Then I present evidence that, according to performance on the CRT (Frederick 2005), those who have benefited from training and selection in philosophy are indeed less prone to one kind of systematic error: irrationally arbitrating between intuitive and reflective responses. Nonetheless, philosophers are not entirely immune to this systematic error, and their proclivity for this error is statistically related to their responses to a variety of philosophical questions. So, while the evidence herein puts constraints on the worries about the integrity of philosophy, it by no means eliminates these worries. The conclusion, then, is that the present evidence offers prima facie reasons to ascribe a mitigated privilege to philosophers' ability to rationally arbitrate between intuitive and reflective responses. (shrink)

The ‘bat and ball’ is one of the problems most frequently employed as a testbed for research on the dual-system hypothesis of reasoning. Frederick (J Econ Perspect 19:25–42, 2005) is the first to envisage the possibility that different numerical arrangements of the ‘bat and ball’ problem could lead to different dynamics of activation of the dual-system, and so to different performances of subjects in task accomplishment. This possibility has triggered a strand of research oriented to accomplish ‘sensitivity analyses’ of the (...) ‘bat and ball’ problem. The scope of this paper is to test experimentally the specific hypothesis that numerals are responsible for the selective activation of the two systems of reasoning in this task. In particular, we argue that their role goes beyond and cannot be reduced to that of numbers conceived as magnitudes. To test our hypothesis, we devise an experimental setting in which the role of numbers (as magnitudes) is rendered irrelevant. We find experimental results consistent with our hypothesis. We further provide a link between the literature on mathematical problem-solving and that on mathematical cognition research, in particular that branch labeled embodied mathematical cognition. (shrink)

Bereby‐Meyer, Hayakawa, Shalvi, Corey, Costa and Keysar investigate lying for self‐serving reasons. Participants in their experiments had to report the outcome of rolling a die only known to them. They inflated their outcomes less, and thus lied less, when using a foreign language than when using their native language. The authors suggest that lying for self‐serving reasons is an automatic tendency that can be overcome by speaking in a foreign language. [71].

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a measure of analytical reasoning that cues an intuitive but incorrect response that must be rejected for successful performance to be attained. The CRT yields two types of errors: Intuitive errors, which are attributed to Type 1 processes; and non-intuitive errors, which result from poor numeracy skills or deficient reasoning. Past research shows that participants who commit the highest numbers of errors on the CRT overestimate their performance the most, whereas those with the lowest (...) error-rates tend to slightly underestimate. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE). The present study examined how intuitive vs. non-intuitive errors contribute to overestimation in the CRT at different levels of performance. Female undergraduate students completed a seven-item CRT test and subsequently estimated their raw score. They also filled out the Faith in Intuition (FI) questionnaire, which is a dispositional measure of intuitive thinking. Data was separated into quartiles based on level of performance on the CRT. The results demonstrated the DKE. Additionally, intuitive and non-intuitive errors predicted miscalibration among low, but not high performers. However, intuitive errors were a stronger predictor of miscalibration. Finally, FI was positively correlated with CRT self-estimates and miscalibration, indicating that participants who perceived themselves to be more intuitive were worse at estimating their score. These results taken together suggest that participants who perform poorly in the CRT and also those who score higher in intuitive thinking disposition are more susceptible to the influences of heuristic-based cues, such as answer fluency, when judging their performance. (shrink)

Supernatural beliefs are ubiquitous around the world, and mounting evidence indicates that these beliefs partly rely on intuitive, cross‐culturally recurrent cognitive processes. Specifically, past research has focused on humans' intuitive tendency to perceive minds as part of the cognitive foundations of belief in a personified God—an agentic, morally concerned supernatural entity. However, much less is known about belief in karma—another culturally widespread but ostensibly non‐agentic supernatural entity reflecting ethical causation across reincarnations. In two studies and four high‐powered samples, including mostly (...) Christian Canadians and mostly Hindu Indians (Study 1, N = 2,006) and mostly Christian Americans and Singaporean Buddhists (Study 2, N = 1,752), we provide the first systematic empirical investigation of the cognitive intuitions underlying various forms of belief in karma. We used path analyses to (a) replicate tests of the previously documented cognitive predictors of belief in God, (b) test whether this same network of variables predicts belief in karma, and (c) examine the relative contributions of cognitive and cultural variables to both sets of beliefs. We found that cognitive tendencies toward intuitive thinking, mentalizing, dualism, and teleological thinking predicted a variety of beliefs about karma—including morally laden, non‐agentic, and agentic conceptualizations—above and beyond the variability explained by cultural learning about karma across cultures. These results provide further evidence for an independent role for both culture and cognition in supporting diverse types of supernatural beliefs in distinct cultural contexts. (shrink)

The cognitive critique of the goals and desires that are input into the implicit calculations that result in instrumental rationality is one aspect of what has been termed broad rationality (Elster, 1983). This cognitive critique involves, among other things, the search for rational integration (Nozick, 1993)—that is, consistency between first-order and second-order preferences. Forming a second-order preference involves metarepresentational abilities made possible by mental decoupling operations. However, these decoupling abilities are separable from the motive that initiates the cognitive critique itself. (...) I argue that Velleman (1992) has identified that motive (“the desire to act in accordance with reasons”), and that it might be operationalisable as a thinking disposition at a very superordinate cognitive level. This thinking disposition, the Master Rationality Motive, is likely to be of particular importance in explaining individual differences in the tendency to seek rational integration. Preliminary research on related constructs suggests that this construct is measurable. (shrink)

Philosophers commonly define knowledge as justified true beliefs. A heated debate exists, however, about what makes a belief justified. In this article, we examine the question of belief justification from a psychological perspective, focusing on the subjective confidence in a belief that the person has just formed. Participants decided whether to accept or reject a proposition depicting a social belief, and indicated their confidence in their choice. The task was repeated six times, and choice latency was measured. The results were (...) analyzed within a Self-Consistency Model of subjective confidence. According to SCM, the decision to accept or reject a proposition is based on the on-line sampling of representations from a pool of representations associated with the proposition. Respondents behave like intuitive statisticians who infer the central tendency of a population based on a small sample. Confidence depends on the consistency with which the belief was supported across the sampled representations, and reflects the likelihood that a new sample will yield the same decision. The results supported the assumption of a commonly shared population of representations associated with each proposition. Based on this assumption, analyses of within-person consistency and cross-person consensus provided support for the model. As expected, choices that deviated from the person’s own modal judgment or from the consensually held judgment took relatively longer to form and were associated with relatively lower confidence, presumably because they were based on non-representative samples. The results were discussed in relation to major epistemological theories – foundationalism, coherentism and reliabilism. (shrink)

Rituals are able to transform ordinary objects into extraordinary objects. And while rituals typically do not cause physical changes, they may imbue objects with a particular specialness – a simple gold band may become a wedding ring, while an ordinary dessert may become a birthday cake. To treat such objects as if they were ordinary then becomes inappropriate. How does this transformation take place in the minds of observers, and how do we recognize it when we see it? Here, we (...) suggest that two under-examined elements of ritual need deeper consideration within the context of ritual cognition. We propose a fully integrated operational definition in which these two critical ritual elements – causal opacity and goal demotion – are included. In a pre-registered experiment one-hundred and one adults, in a 2 × 2 mixed-within participants design observed actions performed upon profane objects. These actions were either ordinary or ritualized, and were described as a blessing, a curse, or were not described at all. Contrary to established findings and pre-registered predictions, we found that ritualized actions alone are not enough to influence perceptions of, and attributions towards, objects, and that positive goal information are more behaviorally persuasive than negative information. However, we found that participants recalled ritualized action in greater detail and with more specificity than ordinary actions. In effect, we demonstrate that causal opacity and goal information interact to allow us to recognize a ritual as a ritual. (shrink)

A consistent finding reported in the literature is that epistemically suspect beliefs are less frequently endorsed by individuals with a greater tendency to think analytically. However, these results have been observed predominantly in Western participants. In the present work, we explore various individual differences known to predict epistemically suspect beliefs across both Western and Eastern cultures. Across four studies with Japanese and Western individuals, we find that the association between thinking style and beliefs varied as a function of culture. Specifically, (...) while Westerners who scored higher on measures of Type-2 analytic thinking tended to endorse epistemically suspect beliefs less, this association was not observed in Japanese samples, suggesting that the often-observed negative association between analytic thinking and epistemically suspect beliefs may be exclusive to Western individuals. Additionally, we demonstrate that a tendency to think holistically is positively associated with the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs within both samples. Overall, we discuss how various individual differences predict the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs across cultures. (shrink)

A framework is presented to better characterize the role of individual differences in information processing style and their interplay with contextual factors in determining decision making quality. In Experiment 1, we show that individual differences in information processing style are flexible and can be modified by situational factors. Specifically, a situational manipulation that induced an analytical mode of thought improved decision quality. In Experiment 2, we show that this improvement in decision quality is highly contingent on the compatibility between the (...) dominant thinking mode and the nature of the task. That is, encouraging an intuitive mode of thought led to better performance on an intuitive task but hampered performance on an analytical task. The reverse pattern was obtained when an analytical mode of thought was encouraged. We discuss the implications of these results for the assessment of decision making competence, and suggest practical directions to help individuals better adjust their information processing style to the situation at hand and make optimal decisions. (shrink)

This article applies the tools of experimental philosophy to the ongoing debate about both the theoretical viability and the practical import of partially aggregative moral theories in distributive ethics. We conduct a series of three experiments (N=383): First, we document the widespread occurrence of the intuitions that motivate this position. Our study then moves beyond establishing the existence of partially aggregative intuitions in two dimensions: First, we extend experimental work in such a way as to ascertain which amongst existing versions (...) of partial aggregation (localised vs. global) chimes more fully with moral common sense. Specifically, we document how, in tie-breaking cases, ‘irrelevant goods’ judgments (Kamm) are just as robust as the original aggregative/non-aggregative pair of judgments that constitute partial aggregation. Second, by pairing laypeople’s moral judgments in standard cases with their intuitions about the limits of permissible self-prioritisation, we investigate whether one prominent explanation of why irrelevant claims may not be aggregated (Voorhoeve’s ‘personal prerogative’ argument) can be said to underpin people’s intuitions about the (ir)relevance relation of claims in conflict cases. We close with a discussion of our findings’ practical and theoretical import and highlight avenues for future research. (shrink)

Recent studies claim that having an analytical cognitive style is correlated with reduced religiosity in western populations. However, in cultural contexts where social norms constrain behavior, such cognitive characteristics may have reduced influence on behaviors and beliefs. We labeled this the ‘constraining environments hypothesis.’ In a sample of 246 Muslims in Turkey, the hypothesis was supported for gender. Females face social pressure to be religious. Unlike their male counterparts, they were more religious, less analytical, and their analytical scores were uncorrelated (...) with religiosity. We had predicted an analogous effect for the comparison between monolingual and bilingual students, since English-proficient students are exposed to a wider social environment. The bilingual students were less religious than the monolingual students, yet they were also less analytical. Thus, being analytical was not the path to lower religiosity for the bilingual students. Cognitive styles need to be studied along with social norms in a variety of cultures, to understand religion-cognition relationships. (shrink)

Using a large sample of retail investors as well as experimental data we find that risk and ambiguity aversion are positively correlated. We provide evidence that a common link is decision mode: intuitive thinkers tolerate more risk and ambiguity than effortful reasoners. One interpretation is that intuitive thinking confers an advantage in risky or ambiguous situations. We present supporting lab and field evidence that intuitive thinkers outperform others in uncertain environments. Finally, we find that risk and ambiguity aversion vary with (...) individual characteristics and wealth. The wealthy are less risk averse but more ambiguity averse, which has implications for financial puzzles. (shrink)

Strategic interactions have been studied extensively in the area of judgment and decision-making. However, so far no specific measure of a decision-maker's ability to be successful in strategic interactions has been proposed and tested. Our contribution is the development of a measure of strategic ability that borrows from both game theory and psychology. Such measure is aimed at providing an estimation of the likelihood of success in many social activities that involve strategic interaction among multiple decision-makers. To construct a reliable (...) measure of strategic ability, that we propose to call ``Strategic Quotient'' (SQ), we designed a test where each item is a game and where, therefore, the individual score obtained depends on the distribution of choices of other decision-makers taking the test. The test is designed to provide information on the abilities related to two dimensions, mentalization and rationality, that we argue are crucial to strategic success, with each dimension being characterized by two main factors. Principal component analysis on preliminary data shows that indeed four factors (two for rationality, two for mentalization) account for strategic success in most of the strategically simpler games of the test. Moreover, two more strategically sophisticated games are inserted in the test and are used to investigate if and to what extent the four factors obtained by simpler games can predict strategic success in more sophisticated strategic interactions. Overall, the collected empirical evidence points to the possibility of building a SQ measure using only simple games designed to capture information about the four identified factors. (shrink)

There exists a large body of work examining individual differences in the propensity to engage in reflective thinking processes. However, there is a distinct lack of empirical research examining th...

As part of the rationality debate, we examine the impact of deliberative and intuitive thinking styles on diversity preference behavior. A sample of 230 students completed the Rational Experiential Inventory and the Diversity Preference Questionnaire, an original measure of diversification behavior in different real-life situations. In cases where no normative solution was available, we found a clear preference for diversity-seeking in the gain domain and diversity-aversion in the loss domain, regardless of cognitive thinking style. However, in cases where one alternative (...) normatively dominated the other, participants high in deliberative thinking style were more calibrated to normative behavior, regardless of whether their intuitive tendency preference and the normative solution were contradictory or pointed in the same direction. Our findings support a model in which deliberative but not intuitive thinking style is the crucial predictor of rational behavior, since it enables people to better adjust their intuitive preference anchor when normative considerations require doing so. (shrink)

The present study investigated whether individual differences between psychologists in thinking styles are associated with accuracy in diagnostic classification. We asked novice and experienced clinicians to classify two clinical cases of clients with two co-occurring psychological disorders. No significant difference in diagnostic accuracy was found between the two groups, but when combining the data from novices and experienced psychologists accuracy was found to be negatively associated with certain decision making strategies and with a higher self-assessed ability and preference for a (...) rational thinking style. Our results underscore the idea that it might be fruitful to look for explanations of differences in the accuracy of diagnostic judgments in individual differences between psychologists (such as in thinking styles or decision making strategies used), rather than in experience level. (shrink)

Two studies examined gender differences in lying when the truth-telling bias prevailed and when inspiring lying and disbelief. The first study used 156 community participants in pairs. First, participants completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the Lie- and Truth Ability Assessment Scale, and the Rational-Experiential Inventory. Then, they participated in a deception game where they performed as senders and receivers of true and false communications. Their goal was to retain as many points as possible according to a payoff matrix that specified (...) the reward they would gain for any possible outcome. Results indicated that men lied more and were more successful lie-tellers than women. In addition, men believed the sender less than women but were not more successful detectors of lies and truths. Higher perceived lie-telling ability, narcissistic features, and experiential thinking style explained men’s performance. The second study used 100 volunteers who underwent the same procedure. However, the payoff matrix encouraged lying and disbelieving. Results showed again that men lied more than women. As to performance, men were more successful lie detectors than women, but there was no truth detection difference. Women did not differ in their success in telling and detecting lies and truths. The inconsistent gender differences in production and detection lies and truths dictate caution in interpreting them. (shrink)

The present study explored several dispositional factors associated with individual differences in lay adult’s interpretation of when an arguer is, or is not, committed to a statement. College students were presented with several two-person arguments in which the proponent of a thesis conceded a key point in the last turn. Participants were then asked to indicate the extent to which that concession implied a change in the proponent’s attitude toward any of the previous statements in the argument. Participants designated as (...) ‘liberal’ used the concession to infer substantial change in commitment to earlier statements in the argument. A group designated as ‘conservative’ were reluctant to make any such inferences. A discriminant analysis indicated that variables assessing participants’ attitudes toward argument as well as their cognitive and communication styles jointly predicted their liberal or conservative status. The discriminant function and follow-up group comparisons indicated that liberals were more likely than conservatives to engage in argument. This included a greater tendency to use argument as a source of knowledge. Liberals also employed a more sophisticated message design logic than conservatives on a communication task. The groups did not clearly differ with respect to participants’ implicit theory of argument, though trends were present that merit attention in future research. Implications of these findings for future research on lay interpretations of commitment are discussed. (shrink)

The first goal of this study was to validate the Rational-Experiential Inventory (REI) and the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) through checking their relation to the transitivity axiom. The second goal was to test the relation between decision strategies and cognitive style as well as the relation between decision strategies and the transitivity of preferences. The following characteristics of strategies were investigated: requirements for trade-offs, maximization vs. satisficing and option-wise vs. attribute-wise information processing. Respondents were given choices between two multi-attribute options. (...) The options were designed so that the choice indicated which strategy was applied. Both the REI-R and the CRT were found to be good predictors of the transitivity of preferences. Respondents who applied compensatory strategies and the maximization criterion scored highly on the REI-R and in the CRT, whereas those who applied the satisficing rule scored highly on the REI-R but not in the CRT. Attribute-wise information processing was related to low scores in both measurements. Option-wise information processing led to a high transitivity of preferences. (shrink)

DNA evidence is one of the most significant modern advances in the search for truth since the cross examination, but its format as a random-match-probability makes it difficult for people to assign an appropriate probative value (Koehler, 2001). While Frequentist theories propose that the presentation of the match as a frequency rather than a probability facilitates more accurate assessment (e.g., Slovic et al., 2000), Exemplar-Cueing Theory predicts that the subjective weight assigned may be affected by the frequency or probability format, (...) and how easily examples of the event, i.e., ‘exemplars’, are generated from linguistic cues that frame the match in light of further evidence (Koehler & Macchi, 2004). This paper presents two juror research studies to examine the difficulties that jurors have in assigning appropriate probative value to DNA evidence when contradictory evidence is presented. Study 1 showed that refuting evidence significantly reduced guilt judgments when exemplars were linguistically cued, even when the probability match and the refuting evidence had the same objective probative value. Moreover, qualitative reason for judgment responses revealed that interpreting refuting evidence was found to be complex and not necessarily reductive; refutation was found indicative of innocence or guilt depending on whether exemplars have been cued or not. Study 2 showed that the introduction of judges’ directions to linguistically cue exemplars, did not increase the impact of refuting evidence beyond its objective probative value, but less guilty verdicts were returned when jurors were instructed to consider all possible explanations of the evidence. The results are discussed in light of contradictory frequentist and exemplar-cueing theoretical positions, and their real-world consequences. (shrink)

Retroactive effects were investigated in the context of a Go/NoGo task. Performance differences between rational and intuitive thinkers also were investigated. Participants were presented with a shape and instructed to either respond or not respond, depending on the shape. In the first Go/NoGo task, the subject had to respond to two shapes that were randomly chosen out of four shapes. In the second Go/NoGo task, participants only had to respond to one shape. This shape was randomly chosen from the two (...) that were used as Go-signals in the first Go/NoGo task. In accordance with the growing literature on retroactive influences on cognition and emotions, where future events seem to have an anomalous, retroactive influence on responses and behavior in the present, we predicted that the second Go/NoGo task would have a practice effect on performance during the first task. We also predicted that this effect would be stronger for subjects classified as “intuitive thinkers” based on the Human Information Processing questionnaire. These predictions were confirmed. During the first Go/NoGo task, the subjects responded ~2% faster to the (target) shape—which they also had to react to during the second task—than to the (control) shape they only had to respond to during the first task (t = 2.59, df = 66, p = 0.024). Subjects with an intuitive thinking style were totally responsible for the whole effect (“intuitive” thinkers alone: t = 3.41, df = 34, p < 0.001). Explorations of the HIP-questionnaire subscales suggest that the relation between anomalous performance and Human Information Processing style is mostly caused by a factor we label as ”rigidity.” We also discuss how “Questionable Research Practices” could have contributed to the current results. (shrink)

Personnel selection has been criticised by scientific researchers for its intuitive interpersonal perception. Despite extensive scientific research in organizational setting, Human Resource practitioners attribute their successful decisions to intuition. In the Studies 1 to 4, personnel decisions made by the participants with different cognitive styles were tested. Participants were asked to select the best candidate based on his resume and recommendations. The candidates had to be evaluated after the structured interview or after the group discussion during the Assessment Center. Participants (...) also had the possibility to decide using the scores of the candidates achieved during the Assessment Center. The results of the first four studies revealed that the intuitive cognitive style was very successful in situations when working with information. This finding supports opinions of the organizational practitioners. At the same time, intuitive interpersonal judgment was significantly worse than rational. This finding supports the recommendations of organizational psychologists to use standardized methods. One explanation of these findings is that intuitive participants have a higher confirmation-bias than rational participants, which was found to influence negatively successful decision making. Intuitive participants showed higher confirmation bias than rational participants, especially in the step-by-step procedure. Rational articipants were interested in the controversial information, but not when asked to decide spontaneously. Alternative explanation of these considers the learning style preferences of the intuitive and rational participants. Rational participants tend to use Realistic Observation, which might explain their good observer qualities. Intuitive participants tend to use Active Experimentation and might handle data with ease, in comparison to the rational participants. Studies 3 and 4 continued investigation on the intuitive and rational decision making in different stages of the personnel selection. Intuitive decision makers were found to be better when handling with big amounts of partially missing, irrelevant information or handling scores of the standardized procedures. They also had higher preferences for cognitive bias and selecting the recommendations supporting their opinion then opposite to it. This could be explained by their learning style preferences – active and pragmatic. Looking for new things and implementing findings. Rational decision makers were more theoretical and looking for controversial information, except for the situations when under stress or forced to make a decision. In this case, similar to the intuitive participants, they also tend to search for consistent information. In the Study 5, we have measured the performance evaluation of groups with rational and intuitive cognitive styles, as well as heterogeneous groups. The findings supported the results of the previous studies that intuitive groups are more successful when working in the natural conditions. Intuitive members come along with each other and don’t report difficulties even when working in the virtual environment. Heterogeneous groups reported no difficulties in the mutual work or communication with each other. In sum, we have studied the influence of the intuitive and rational style on the personnel decisions made when using different personnel selection methods. We have also studied the mutual work of the participants with different cognitive styles. (shrink)

The ratio bias—according to which individuals prefer to bet on probabilities expressed as a ratio of large numbers to normatively equivalent or superior probabilities expressed as a ratio of small numbers—has recently gained momentum, with researchers especially in health economics emphasizing the policy importance of the phenomenon. Although the bias has been replicated several times, some doubts remain about its economic significance. Our two experiments show that the bias disappears once order effects are excluded, and once salient and dominant incentives (...) are provided. This holds true for both choice and valuation tasks. Also, adding context to the decision problem does not alter this finding. No ratio bias could be found in between-subject tests either, which leads us to the conclusion that the policy relevance of the phenomenon is doubtful at best. (shrink)

Reward attribute, i.e. long-term versus short-term reward, is the most commonly analyzed choice attribute in Iowa Gambling Task . The present study employs measures of individual differences to explore preferences in IGT choices, based on punishment attribute along with the reward attribute. Three questionnaires were employed to analyze whether preferences were based on reward or on punishment attribute of the IGT choices. The T test indicated a selective preference for punishment, but not for reward attribute. Pearson’s correlation revealed that rational (...) information processing is associated with more choices from infrequent–large punishment decks. Regression analysis indicated that rational information processing, tendency to maximize-experience regret, and risk attitude accounted for selective preferences based on the punishment attribute. Measures employed were unrelated to reward attribute of the IGT choices. Results are explained in terms of choice preference for frequent but smaller magnitude versus infrequent but larger magnitude punishment in IGT. (shrink)