Subjects were asked to assess their subjective probability distributions for unknown parameters of Bernoulli processes. The processes were generated by random devices like, for instance, irregular dice. The assessments were based on two assessment techniques. One asked for the median and quartiles of the distributions, the other asked for the impact of four hypothetical samples. The main purpose of the study was to study the resulting two sets of distributions. The results show substantial differences between the distributions using the two (...) techniques but these differences decreased as the experiment progressed. (shrink)

A concern for individual differences has been missing from the Great Rationality Debate in cognitive science—the debate about how much irrationality to attribute to human cognition. There are individual differences in rational thinking that are less than perfectly correlated with individual differences in intelligence because intelligence and rationality occupy different conceptual locations in models of cognition. A tripartite extension of currently popular dual-process theories is presented in this chapter that illustrates how intelligence and rationality are theoretically separate concepts. The chapter (...) concludes by showing how this tripartite model of mind, taken in the context of studies of individual differences, can help to resolve the Great Rationality Debate. (shrink)

Much research in the last two decades has demonstrated that human responses deviate from the performance deemed normative according to various models of decision making and rational judgment (e.g., the basic axioms of utility theory). This gap between the normative and the descriptive can be interpreted as indicating systematic irrationalities in human cognition. However, four alternative interpretations preserve the assumption that human behavior and cognition is largely rational. These posit that the gap is due to (1) performance errors, (2) computational (...) limitations, (3) the wrong norm being applied by the experimenter, and (4) a different construal of the task by the subject. In the debates about the viability of these alternative explanations, attention has been focused too narrowly on the modal response. In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, we have examined the implications of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap. Performance errors are a minor factor in the gap; computational limitations underlie non-normative responding on several tasks, particularly those that involve some type of cognitive decontextualization. Unexpected patterns of covariance can suggest when the wrong norm is being applied to a task or when an alternative construal of the task should be considered appropriate. Key Words: biases; descriptive models; heuristics; individual differences; normative models; rationality; reasoning. (shrink)

The topic is experimental philosophy as a naturalistic movement, and its bearing on the value of intuitions in philosophy. This paper explores first how the movement might bear on philosophy more generally, and how it might amount to something novel and promising. Then it turns to one accomplishment repeatedly claimed for it already: namely, the discrediting of armchair intuitions as used in philosophy.

Criticizes R. E. Nisbett and T. D. Wilson's counterintuitive argument on theoretical and methodological grounds. It is suggested that inappropriate statistical tests were used and that their argument was stated in a nonfalsifiable position. In addition, it is also argued that causality was incorrectly defined, other essential definitions were missing, and that other evidence opposes their theory.

Distinctions have been proposed between systems of reasoning for centuries. This article distills properties shared by many of these distinctions and characterizes the resulting systems in light of recent findings and theoretical developments. One system is associative because its computations reflect similarity structure and relations of temporal contiguity. The other is "rule based" because it operates on symbolic structures that have logical content and variables and because its computations have the properties that are normally assigned to rules. The systems serve (...) complementary functions and can simultaneously generate different solutions to a reasoning problem. The rule-based system can suppress the associative system but not completely inhibit it. The article reviews evidence in favor of the distinction and its characterization. (shrink)

People often choose intuitive rather than equally valid nonintuitive alternatives. The authors suggest that these intuitive biases arise because intuitions often spring to mind with subjective ease, and the subjective ease leads people to hold their intuitions with high confidence. An investigation of predictions against point spreads found that people predicted intuitive options more often than equally valid nonintuitive alternatives. Critically, though, this effect was largely determined by people's confidence in their intuitions. Across naturalistic, expert, and laboratory samples, against personally (...) determined point spreads, and even when intuitive confidence was manipulated by altering irrelevant aspects of the decision context, the authors found that decreasing intuitive confidence reduced or eliminated intuitive biases. These findings indicate that intuitive biases are not inevitable but rather predictably determined by contextual variables that affect intuitive confidence. (shrink)

In two experiments, we investigated the relationship between confidence and accuracy in syllogistic reasoning. Participants judged the validity of conclusions and provided confidence ratings twice for each problem: once quickly and again after further deliberation. Correlations between confidence and accuracy were small or nonexistent. In addition, confidence and accuracy were mediated by different variables. Confidence judgments appeared to reflect external cues, so that confidence was greater when the participants were allowed additional time to think about the problem, as well as (...) when the conclusion was either believable or unbelievable, rather than neutral. In contrast, accuracy changed little as a function of the amount of time available and did not differ for believable and neutral problems. These data support a model in which initial decisions are made quickly, on the basis of heuristic cues, and analytic processes are used to justify or rationalize the earlier decision. (shrink)

Tested the 2-process theory of detection, search, and attention presented by the current authors in a series of experiments. The studies demonstrate the qualitative difference between 2 modes of information processing: automatic detection and controlled search; trace the course of the learning of automatic detection, of categories, and of automatic-attention responses; and show the dependence of automatic detection on attending responses and demonstrate how such responses interrupt controlled processing and interfere with the focusing of attention. The learning of categories is (...) shown to improve controlled search performance. A general framework for human information processing is proposed. The framework emphasizes the roles of automatic and controlled processing. The theory is compared to and contrasted with extant models of search and attention. (shrink)

Compared the use of unit regression weights with least squared error multiple regression weights. 100 sample correlation matrices computed from randomly drawn samples from a multivariate normal distribution were employed, with the sample size varying from 25-1,000 and number of variables from 2-10. In addition, correlation matrices were also sampled from published data. The results of comparing the efficiency of the 2 methods of weighting are presented for correlation matrices with and without the effect of suppressor variables. Use of these (...) findings is discussed. (shrink)

Many philosophers appeal to intuitions to support some philosophical views. However, there is reason to be concerned about this practice as scientific evidence has documented systematic bias in philosophically relevant intuitions as a function of seemingly irrelevant features (e.g., personality). One popular defense used to insulate philosophers from these concerns holds that philosophical expertise eliminates the influence of these extraneous factors. Here, we test this assumption. We present data suggesting that verifiable philosophical expertise in the free will debate-as measured by (...) a reliable and validated test of expert knowledge-does not eliminate the influence of one important extraneous feature (i.e., the heritable personality trait extraversion) on judgments concerning freedom and moral responsibility. These results suggest that, in at least some important cases, the expertise defense fails. Implications for the practice of philosophy, experimental philosophy, and applied ethics are discussed. (shrink)

Some theorists, ranging from W. James to contemporary psychologists, have argued that forgetting is the key to proper functioning of memory. The authors elaborate on the notion of beneficial forgetting by proposing that loss of information aids inference heuristics that exploit mnemonic information. To this end, the authors bring together 2 research programs that take an ecological approach to studying cognition. Specifically, they implement fast and frugal heuristics within the ACT-R cognitive architecture. Simulations of the recognition heuristic, which relies on (...) systematic failures of recognition to infer which of 2 objects scores higher on a criterion value, demonstrate that forgetting can boost accuracy by increasing the chances that only 1 object is recognized. Simulations of the fluency heuristic, which arrives at the same inference on the basis of the speed with which objects are recognized, indicate that forgetting aids the discrimination between the objects' recognition speeds. (shrink)

People commonly believe that they communicate better with close friends than with strangers. We propose, however, that closeness can lead people to overestimate how well they communicate, a phenomenon we term the closeness-communication bias. In one experiment, participants who followed direction of a friend were more likely to make egocentric errors—look at and reach for an object only they could see—than were those who followed direction of a stranger. In two additional experiments, participants who attempted to convey particular meanings with (...) ambiguous phrases overestimated their success more when communicating with a friend or spouse than with strangers. We argue that people engage in active monitoring of strangers’ divergent perspectives because they know they must, but that they “let down their guard” and rely more on their own perspective when they communicate with a friend. (shrink)

We report three experimental studies of reasoning with double conditionals, i.e. problems based on premises of the form: If A then B. If B then C. where A, B, and C, describe everyday events. We manipulated both the logical structure of the problems, using all four possible arrangements (or “figures” of their constituents, A, B, and C, and the believability of the two salient conditional conclusions that might follow from them, i.e. If A then C, or If C then A. (...) The experiments showed that with figures for which there was a valid conclusion, the participants more often, and more rapidly, drew the valid conclusion when it was believable than when it was unbelievable. With figures for which there were no valid conclusions, the participants tended to draw whichever of the two conclusions was believable. These results were predicted by the theory that reasoning depends on constructing mental models of the premises. (shrink)

Apparent evidence that awareness regularly mediates verbal conditioning actually may by attributable to a self-fulfilling experimental methodology. A more appropriate procedure was devised in which a subtle reversal of the roles of S and E distracted the actual S from acquiring the problem-solving set characteristic of previous methods. This "double-agent" approach was established in the context of an interview. The interviewer considered himself the E, and was told that his assignment was to reinforce a particular motor response in the interviewee. (...) The interviewee was in fact the E; he used that motor response to reinforce a particular choice of verbal prompt in the interviewer. Thereby, the double-agent interviewee was able to accomplish seven reversals in the relative rates of 2 of the interviewer's prompts. Frequent probing of the interviewer indicated that he was not aware of these changes in his own behavior, and that he had other irrelevant hypotheses to explain his variable apparent success in reinforcing the interviewee's motor response. Variable success in obtaining the effect across Ss may eventually be accounted for by parameters of the setting and by the S's other characteristic uses of the verbal responses chosen for study. Thus, the results indicate that verbal operant conditioning can occur without awareness in some persons, and that a person may unknowingly let his verbal behavior be controlled by another person in order to himself gain control over certain aspects of the other's behavior. (shrink)

The distinction between bottom-up and top-down control of action has been central in cognitive psychology, and, subsequently, in functional neuroimaging. While the model has proven successful in describing central mechanisms in cognitive experiments, it has serious shortcomings in explaining how top-down control is established. In particular, questions as to what is at the top in top-down control lead us to a controlling homunculus located in a mythical brain region with outputs and no inputs. Based on a discussion of recent brain (...) imaging experiments, we argue for the need to factor the interaction between the experimenter and the experimental participant into a realistic understanding of top-down control. We suggest these interactions involve a ‘sharing of scripts’ for perception and action that may be described as ‘top-top processes.’ We thereby expand the understanding of the homunculus to include elements of social cognition. This conceptual reconfiguration may grant some sort of asylum for a—not very omnipotent—homunculus. (shrink)

Cognitive science is shamelessly materialistic. It maintains that human beings are nothing more than complex physical systems, ultimately and completely explicable in mechanistic terms. But this conception of humanity does not ?t well with common sense. To think of the creatures we spend much of our day loving, hating, admiring, resenting, comparing ourselves to, trying to understand, blaming, and thanking -- to think of them as mere mechanisms seems at best counterintuitive and unhelpful. More often it may strike us as (...) ludicrous, or even abhorrent. We are. (shrink)

The present study examined the effects of semantic structure on simple inductive judgments about category members. For a particular category, subjects were told that one of the species had a given property and were asked to estimate the proportion of instances in the other species that possessed the property. The results indicated that category structure—in particular, the typicality of the species—influenced subjects' judgments. These results were interpreted by models based on the following assumption: When little is known about the underlying (...) distribution of a property, subjects assume that the distribution mirrors that of better-known properties. For this reason, if subjects learn that an unknown property is possessed by a typical species, they are more likely to generalize than if the same fact had been learned about an atypical species. (shrink)

Paranormal beliefs are often divided between those that are central to traditional Christian doctrine, such as the belief in heaven and hell, and those that are commonly associated with the supernatural or occult, such as the belief in ESP and psychic healing. This study employs data from a recent nationwide random sample general population survey to catalog the social correlates of paranormal beliefs and to examine the relationships between religious and other paranormal beliefs. The results indicate that standard social background (...) factors do a poor job of accounting for who believes in paranormal phenomena and that the importance of specific background factors changes dramatically from phenomenon to phenomenon. The results also show that the correlations between belief in religious phenomena and other paranormal phenomena are largely insignificant. These findings call into question many prevailing theories about paranormal beliefs. (shrink)

We review the current status of fuzzy-trace theory. The presentation is organized around five topics. First, theoretical ideas that immediately preceded the development of fuzzy-trace theory are sketched. Second, experimental findings that challenged those ideas are summarized. Third, the core assumptions that comprised the initial version of fuzzy-trace theory are described. Fourth, some modifications to those assumptions are explored that were necessitated by subsequent experimental findings. Fifth, four areas of experimentation are considered in which research under the aegis of fuzzy-trace (...) theory is in progress: suggestibility and false memories; judgment and decision making; the development of forgetting; and the development of retrieval. (shrink)

Class inclusion, the conjunction fallacy, and other phenomena are presented to illustrate cognitive illusions, that reasoning can be misdirected so that errors of judgment violate known principles. Errors in class inclusion are traced to accessing and implementing logical knowledge, rather than logical deficits, memory overload, or misleading questions. It is argued that superordinate-set cuing does not afford subset comparisons, but, rather, facilitates implementation of logical knowledge. According to fuzzy-trace theory, successful performance involves applying the cardinality principle, but also suppressing solutions (...) based on judgments of relative numerosity, in which horizontal relationships between classes are apt to usurp the role of vertical ones. (shrink)

Five aspects of visual change detection are reviewed. The first concerns the concept of change itself, in particular the ways it differs from the related notions of motion and difference. The second involves the various methodological approaches that have been developed to study change detection; it is shown that under a variety of conditions observers are often unable to see large changes directly in their field of view. Next, it is argued that this “change blindness” indicates that focused attention is (...) needed to detect change, and that this can help map out the nature of visual attention. The fourth aspect concerns how these results affect our understanding of visual perception—for example, the implication that a sparse, dynamic representation underlies much of our visual experience. Finally, a brief discussion is presented concerning the limits to our current understanding of change detection. (shrink)

In recent decades it has become increasingly clear that a substantial amount of cognitive work goes on independent of consciousness. The research has been carried out largely under two rubrics, implicit learning and implicit memory. The former has been concerned primarily with the acquisition of knowledge independent of awareness and the latter with the manner in which memories not readily available to conscious recall or recognition play a role in behavior; collectively these operations comprise the essential functions of the cognitive (...) unconscious. This paper reviews the recent history of work on these issues, identifies some of the problems confronting researchers, and introduces a theoretical framework based on principles of evolutionary biology within which to view them. The argument is that the cognitive unconscious, despite its apparent sophistication, is of considerable evolutionary antiquity and antedates conscious cognitive systems by a considerable amount of time. Various entailments of this evolutionary perspective are explored including such issues as phylogeny and ontogeny of implicit processes, the robustness of the implicit functions as displayed by the capacity to resist disruptions from psychological and neurological disorders, the relationship between implicit cognition and intelligence, and individual differences in implicit cognitive abilities. (shrink)

I examine the phenomenon of implicit learning, the process by which knowledge about the rule-governed complexities of the stimulus environment is acquired independently of conscious attempts to do so. Our research with the two seemingly disparate experimental paradigms of synthetic grammar learning and probability learning, is reviewed and integrated with other approaches to the general problem of unconscious cognition. The conclusions reached are as follows: Implicit learning produces a tacit knowledge base that is abstract and representative of the structure of (...) the environment; such knowledge is optimally acquired independently of conscious efforts to learn; and it can be used implicitly to solve problems and make accurate decisions about novel stimulus circumstances. Various epistemological issues and related problems such as intuition, neuroclinical disorders of learning and memory, and the relationship of evolutionary processes to cognitive science are also discussed. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to put the work of the past several decades on the problems of implicit learning and unconscious cognition into an evolutionary context. Implicit learning is an inductive process whereby knowledge of a complex environment is acquired and used largely independently of awareness of either the process of acquisition or the nature of that which has been learned. Characterized this way, implicit learning theory can be viewed as an attempt to come to grips with the classic (...) epistemological issues of knowledge acquisition, representation and use. The argument is made that the process, despite its seeming cognitive sophistication, is of considerable evolutionary antiquity and that it antedates awareness and the capacity for conscious control of mentation. Various classic heuristics from evolutionary biology are used to substantiate this claim and several specific entailments of this line of argument are outlined. (shrink)

Most theories of deduction have assumed that linguistic processes transduce from language into an internal representation and back again, and that non-linguistic processes are central to deduction itself. In this article it is proposed that for deduction tasks for which the necessary information is provided verbally, the heart of deduction for untrained participants involves repeatedly reencoding the problem, a type of behavior referred to here as verbal reasoning. It is shown that model theory accounts of behavior on most deduction tasks (...) are consistent with verbal reasoning and that verbal reasoning can account for detailed behavior in a single task; a computational model of syllogistic reasoning—VR—based on linguistic mechanisms is presented. VR models all of the standard phenomena, makes a number of accurate novel predictions, and fits the behavior of individual participants with an accuracy that rivals their own test–retest reliability. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have gathered impressive evidence for the surprising conclusion that philosophers' intuitions are out of step with those of the folk. As a result, many argue that philosophers' intuitions are unreliable. Focusing on the Knobe Effect, a leading finding of experimental philosophy, we defend traditional philosophy against this conclusion. Our key premise relies on experiments we conducted which indicate that judgments of the folk elicited under higher quality cognitive or epistemic conditions are more likely to resemble those of the (...) philosopher. We end by showing how our experimental findings can help us better understand the Knobe Effect. (shrink)

The well-known experiments of Nisbett and Wilson lead to the conclusion that we have no introspective access to our decision-making processes. Johansson et al. have recently developed an original protocol consisting in manipulating covertly the relationship between the subjects’ intended choice and the outcome they were presented with: in 79.6% of cases, they do not detect the manipulation and provide an explanation of the choice they did not make, confirming the findings of Nisbett and Wilson. We have reproduced this protocol, (...) while introducing for some choices an expert guidance to the description of this choice. The subjects who were assisted detected the manipulation in 80% of cases. Our experiment confirms Nisbett and Wilson’s findings that we are usually unaware of our decision processes, but goes further by showing that we can access them through specific mental acts. (shrink)

While individual differences in the willingness and ability to engage analytic processing have long informed research in reasoning and decision making, the implications of such differences have not yet had a strong influence in other domains of psychological research. We claim that analytic thinking is not limited to problems that have a normative basis and, as an extension of this, predict that individual differences in analytic thinking will be influential in determining beliefs and values. Along with assessments of cognitive ability (...) and style, religious beliefs, and moral values, participants judged the wrongness of acts considered disgusting and conventionally immoral, but that do not violate care- or fairness-based moral principles. Differences in willingness to engage analytic thinking predicted reduced judgements of wrongness, independent of demographics, political ideology, religiosity, and moral values. Further, we show that those who were higher in cognitive ability were less likely to indicate that purity, patriotism, and respect for traditions and authority are important to their moral thinking. These findings are consistent with a “Reflectionist” view that assumes a role for analytic thought in determining substantive, deeply-held human beliefs and values. (shrink)

We tested models of base rate “neglect” using a novel paradigm. Participants judged the probability that a hypothetical person belonged to one of two categories on the basis of either a personality description alone or the personality description and a base rate probability. When base rates and descriptions were congruent, judgments in the BR condition were higher and more uniform than those in the NoBR condition. In contrast, base rates had a polarizing effect on judgments when they were incongruent with (...) the descriptions, such that estimates were either consistent with the base rates or discrepant with them. These data suggest that the form of base rate use is context dependent. In addition, judgments made under instructions to respond intuitively were influenced by the base rates and took the same length of time in the two conditions. These data suggest that the use of base rates is routine and effortless and that base rate “neglect” is really a mixture of two strategies, one that is informed primarily by the base rate and the other by the personality description. (shrink)

In a paper recently published in Intelligence, Razmyar and Reeve found that participants with more analytic cognitive styles reported lower religiosity on a range of measures. Importantly, however, cognitive style did not add unique effects to the prediction of religiosity once cognitive ability was taken into account; a finding that is inconsistent with previous research on the topic. However, the authors failed to discuss this inconsistency and, in fact, only cited one of the many relevant papers on the topic. The (...) relevant paper that was cited, Shenhav, Rand, and Greene, was also not accurately represented, making it difficult to draw informed conclusions about their results. In this commentary, I review the evidence that indicates a unique relation between cognitive style and religious belief. This review highlights recent developments in the field as a means to situate Razmyar and Reeve's finding in the current literature. I conclude by drawing on this research to discuss the potential reasons for Razmyar and Reeve's discrepant results. (shrink)

Recent research has indicated a negative relation between the propensity for analytic reasoning and religious beliefs and practices. Here, we propose conflict detection as a mechanism underlying this relation, on the basis of the hypothesis that more-analytic people are less religious, in part, because they are more sensitive to conflicts between immaterial religious beliefs and beliefs about the material world. To examine cognitive conflict sensitivity, we presented problems containing stereotypes that conflicted with base-rate probabilities in a task with no religious (...) content. In three studies, we found evidence that religiosity is negatively related to conflict detection during reasoning. Independent measures of analytic cognitive style also positively predicted conflict detection. The present findings provide evidence for a mechanism potentially contributing to the negative association between analytic thinking and religiosity, and more generally, they illustrate the insights to be gained from integrating individual-difference factors and contextual factors to investigate analytic reasoning. (shrink)

Base-rate neglect refers to the tendency for people to underweight base-rate probabilities in favor of diagnostic information. It is commonly held that base-rate neglect occurs because effortful reasoning is required to process base-rate information, whereas diagnostic information is accessible to fast, intuitive processing. To test this account, we instructed participants to respond to base-rate problems on the basis of “beliefs” or “statistics,” both in free time and under a time limit. Participants were given problems with salient stereotypes that either conflicted (...) or coincided with base-rate probabilities. If utilizing base-rates requires Type 2 processing, they should not interfere with the processing of the presumably faster belief-based judgments, whereas belief-based judgments should always interfere with statistics judgments. However, base-rates interfered with belief judgments to the same extent as the stereotypes interfered with statistical judgments, as indexed by increased response time and decreased confidence for conflict problems relative to nonconflict. These data suggest that base-rates, while typically underweighted or neglected, do not require Type 2 processing and may, in fact, be accessible to Type 1 processing. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that people are highly efficient at detecting conflicting outputs produced by competing intuitive and analytic reasoning processes. Specifically, De Neys and Glumicic demonstrated that participants reason longer about problems that are characterized by conflict between stereotypical personality descriptions and base-rate probabilities of group membership. However, this finding comes from problems involving probabilities much more extreme than those used in traditional studies of base-rate neglect. To test the degree to which these findings depend on such extreme probabilities, we (...) varied base-rate probabilities over five experiments and compared participants’ response time for conflict problems with non-conflict problems. Longer response times for stereotypical responses to conflict versus non-conflict problems were found only in the presence of extreme probabilities. Our results suggest that humans may not be consistently efficient at detecting conflicts during reasoning. (shrink)

We provide evidence that religious skeptics, as compared to believers, are both more reflective and effective in logical reasoning tasks. While recent studies have reported a negative association between an analytic cognitive style and religiosity, they focused exclusively on accuracy, making it difficult to specify potential underlying cognitive mechanisms. The present study extends the previous research by assessing both performance and response times on quintessential logical reasoning problems. Those reporting more religious skepticism made fewer reasoning errors than did believers. This (...) finding remained significant after controlling for general cognitive ability, time spent on the problems, and various demographic variables. Crucial for the purpose of exploring underlying mechanisms, response times indicated that skeptics also spent more time reasoning than did believers. This novel finding suggests a possible role of response slowing during analytic problem solving as a component of cognitive style that promotes overriding intuitive first impressions. Implications for using additional processing measures, such as response time, to investigate individual differences in cognitive style are discussed. (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)

The lack of gender parity in philosophy has garnered serious attention recently. Previous empirical work that aims to quantify what has come to be called “the gender gap” in philosophy focuses mainly on the absence of women in philosophy faculty and graduate programs. Our study looks at gender representation in philosophy among undergraduate students, undergraduate majors, graduate students, and faculty. Our findings are consistent with what other studies have found about women faculty in philosophy, but we were able to add (...) two pieces of new information. First, the biggest drop in the proportion of women in philosophy occurs between students enrolled in introductory philosophy classes and philosophy majors. Second, this drop is mitigated by the presence of more women philosophy faculty. (shrink)

Some U.S. school districts are experimenting with single-sex schooling, hoping that it will yield better academic outcomes for students. Empirical research on the effects of single-sex schooling, however, has been equivocal, with various studies finding benefits, disadvantages, or no effect. Most of this research is marred because families generally choose whether the child attends a single-sex or coeducational school, so there are selection effects that create pre-existing differences between students in the different types of schools. The research reported here capitalized (...) on the case of Korea, where students are randomly assigned to single-sex or coeducational schools. Using 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study data, we applied hierarchical linear modeling to account for the nesting of students within schools. Results for eighth graders indicated no differences between students in single-sex and coeducational schools in mathematics and science achievement. Results from the 2003 TIMSS data replicated the finding: students' mathematics and science achievement was unrelated to the gender composition of their school. These results call into question whether single-sex schooling has the academic advantages claimed by its proponents. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, humans are the rational animal. The borderline between rationality and irrationality is fundamental to many aspects of human life including the law, mental health, and language interpretation. But what is it to be rational? One answer, deeply embedded in the Western intellectual tradition since ancient Greece, is that rationality concerns reasoning according to the rules of logic – the formal theory that specifies the inferential connections that hold with certainty between propositions. Piaget viewed logical reasoning as defining (...) the end-point of cognitive development; and contemporary psychology of reasoning has focussed on comparing human reasoning against logical standards. (shrink)

128 female Ss were asked to make 4 judgments about a young woman after reading her "job application portfolio." Five characteristics of the young woman were manipulated orthogonally. Ss were asked to report how each of the 5 manipulated factors had influenced each of their judgments. "Observer Ss," who had access only to very impoverished descriptions of each of the 5 factors, were asked to predict how each of the factors would influence each of the judgments. Results show that S (...) reports about the effects of the factors on the judgments were in general highly inaccurate; observer predictions were extremely similar to S reports; for the single judgment for which Ss showed substantial accuracy, observer predictions were as accurate as S reports. Results indicate that whatever introspective access to cognitive processes may exist, it is not sufficient to produce generally accurate reports about such processes, nor even to produce reports that differ much from those of poorly informed outside observers. (shrink)

Staged 2 different videotaped interviews with the same individual—a college instructor who spoke English with a European accent. In one of the interviews the instructor was warm and friendly, in the other, cold and distant. 118 undergraduates were asked to evaluate the instructor. Ss who saw the warm instructor rated his appearance, mannerisms, and accent as appealing, whereas those who saw the cold instructor rated these attributes as irritating. Results indicate that global evaluations of a person can induce altered evaluations (...) of the person's attributes, even when there is sufficient information to allow for independent assessments of them. Furthermore, Ss were unaware of this influence of global evaluations on ratings of attributes. In fact, Ss who saw the cold instructor actually believed that the direction of influence was opposite to the true direction. They reported that their dislike of the instructor had no effect on their rating of his attributes but that their dislike of his attributes had lowered their global evaluations of him. (shrink)

The authors find East Asians to be holistic, attending to the entire field and assigning causality to it, making relatively little use of categories and formal logic, and relying on "dialectical" reasoning, whereas Westerners, are more analytic, paying attention primarily to the object and the categories to which it belongs and using rules, including formal logic, to understand its behavior. The 2 types of cognitive processes are embedded in different naive metaphysical systems and tacit epistemologies. The authors speculate that the (...) origin of these differences is traceable to markedly different social systems. The theory and the evidence presented call into question long-held assumptions about basic cognitive processes and even about the appropriateness of the process–content distinction. (shrink)