People feel they understand complex phenomena with far greater precision, coherence, and depth than they really do; they are subject to an illusion—an illusion of explanatory depth. The illusion is far stronger for explanatory knowledge than many other kinds of knowledge, such as that for facts, procedures or narratives. The illusion for explanatory knowledge is most robust where the environment supports real‐time explanations with visible mechanisms. We demonstrate the illusion of depth with explanatory knowledge in Studies 1–6. Then we show (...) differences in overconfidence about knowledge across different knowledge domains in Studies 7–10. Finally, we explore the mechanisms behind the initial confidence and behind overconfidence in Studies 11 and 12, and discuss the implications of our findings for the roles of intuitive theories in concepts and cognition. (shrink)

Metacognitive research is dominated by meta-memory studies; meta-reasoning research is nascent. Accessibility – the number of associations for a stimulus – is a reliable heuristic cue for Feeling of Knowing when answering knowledge questions. We used a similar cue, subjective accessibility, for exposing commonalities and differences between meta-reasoning and meta-memory. In Experiment 1, participants faced solvable Compound Remote Associate problems mixed with unsolvable random word triads. We collected initial Judgement of Solvability, final JOS and confidence. Experiment 2 focused on confidence, (...) controlling for potential interactions among judgements. In Experiment 3, the participants memorised the same triads and rated Ease of Learning and Judgement of Learning. sAccessibility was associated with all judgements. Notably, it reliably predicted memory judgements and confidence in the provided solutions. However, it was unreliable for judging solvability. The findings highlight the importance of studying meta-reasoning for exposing the biasing factors in reasoning processes and for getting a broad perspective on metacognitive processes. (shrink)