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This research examines the metacognitive awareness that people have about their reasoning performance in the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). The first two studies compare confidence judgments about the CRT vs. general knowledge (GK) questions. Results show that (1) people are generally able to discriminate between correct and incorrect answers, but this ability is far from perfect, and it is greater for GK questions than for CRT problems. Indeed, and strikingly, (2) incorrect responses to CRT problems are produced with approximately the same level of confidence as correct responses to GK questions. However, (3) even though confidence is high for incorrect responses to CRT problems, it is even higher for correct responses. The results of two additional studies show that these differences in confidence are ultimately related to the conflict that CRT problems pose between intuition and deliberation. These findings have implications for the possibility of implicit error monitoring and dual-process models of overconfidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on implicit conflict detection suggests that people are sensitive to violations of logical principles. When they make reasoning errors, their epistemic radar presumably detects an anomaly. This study tested conflict detection using novel measures: self-report measures of how much reasoners struggled when solving a problem and whether they considered an alternative response, and social inferences of what they believe other people would respond. Moreover, this study tested whether these social inferences are informed by how much conflict people feel when trying to decide on an answer themselves. Results show 1) that reasoners in general are conflict-sensitive, even when they are incorrect; but 2) this sensitivity is greater for correct vs. incorrect responders; and 3) the experience of conflict influences social inferences, such that reasoners are less likely to believe that other people share their response when they themselves considered an alternative response when trying to solve a problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tested whether people have an accurate sense of how good their reasoning is, as measured by their confidence in their responses, and how good they feel after they give those responses. First, incorrect responders were unjustifiably confident in their responses. However, correct responders were even more confident, and this confidence boost was found to come from their awareness of alternative solutions that are intuitive but incorrect. An affect measure revealed the same pattern: correct responders felt better, and incorrect responders felt worse, after they solved reasoning problems, but this was only the case when post-reasoning affect was measured after participants were instructed to think of alternative solutions. Implications are discussed for the possibility of implicit error monitoring, the role of counterfactual thinking in meta-reasoning, and the use of affective measures in meta-reasoning research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]