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Although the susceptibility to reasoning biases is often assumed to be a stable trait, the temporal stability of people’s performance on popular heuristics-and-biases tasks has been rarely directly tested. The present study addressed this issue and examined a potential determinant for answer change. Participants solved the same set of “bias” tasks twice in two test sessions, two weeks apart. We used the two-response paradigm to test the stability of both initial (intuitive) and final (deliberate) responses. We hypothesized that participants who showed higher conflict detection in their initial intuitive responses at session 1 (as indexed by a relative confidence decrease compared to control problems), would be less stable in their responses between session 1 and 2. Results showed that performance on the reasoning tasks was highly, but not entirely, stable two weeks later. Notably, conflict detection in session 1 was significantly more pronounced in those cases that participants changed their answer between session 1 and 2 than when they did not change their answer between sessions. We discuss practical and theoretical implications.

Traditionally, it has been assumed that logical thinking requires deliberation. However, people can also make logical responses quickly, exhibiting

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International audience; In a previous article published in Perspectives, I questioned whether the debate between dual- and single-process models of thinking is empirically tractable and argued that psychological scientists should leave it behind. Dewey (this issue) suggests that by reframing the debate in cognitive-modeling terms, it might become tractable and consequential. More specifically, he proposes that focusing on the question of whether analytic engagement (i.e., the process by which additional resources are allocated to a reasoning problem) is discrete or continuous might allow us to settle the debate. Here I illustrate how this suggestion is likely to face the same tractability problems as the original defining-features approach that it is supposed to replace.

Recent reasoning accounts suggest that people can process elementary logical principles intuitively. These controversial “logical intuitions” are believed to result from a learning process in which...

Human interactions often involve a choice between acting selfishly (in ones' own interest) and acting prosocially (in the interest of others). Fast and slow models of prosociality posit that people intuitively favor 1 of these choices (the selfish choice in some models, the prosocial choice in other models) and need to correct this intuition through deliberation to make the other choice. We present 7 studies that force us to reconsider this longstanding corrective dual-process view. Participants played various economic games in which they had to choose between a prosocial and a selfish option. We used a 2-response paradigm in which participants had to give their first, initial response under time pressure and cognitive load. Next, participants could take all the time they wanted to reflect on the problem and give a final response. This allowed us to identify the intuitively generated response that preceded the final response given after deliberation. Results consistently showed that both prosocial and selfish responses were predominantly made intuitively rather than after deliberate correction. Pace the deliberate correction view, the findings indicate that making prosocial and selfish choices does typically not rely on different types of reasoning modes (intuition vs. deliberation) but rather on different types of intuitions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Building on the old adage that the deliberate mind corrects the emotional heart, the influential dual process model of moral cognition has posited that utilitarian responding to moral dilemmas (i.e., choosing the greater good) requires deliberate correction of an intuitive deontological response. In the present article, we present 4 studies that force us to revise this longstanding "corrective" dual process assumption. We used a two-response paradigm in which participants had to give their first, initial response to moral dilemmas under time-pressure and cognitive load. Next, participants could take all the time they wanted to reflect on the problem and give a final response. This allowed us to identify the intuitively generated response that preceded the final response given after deliberation. Results consistently show that in the vast majority of cases (+ 70%) in which people opt for a utilitarian response after deliberation, the utilitarian response is already given in the initial phase. Hence, utilitarian responders do not need to deliberate to correct an initial deontological response. Their intuitive response is already utilitarian in nature. We show how this leads to a revised model in which moral judgments depend on the absolute and relative strength differences between competing deontological and utilitarian intuitions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

International audience; Influential studies on human thinking with the popular two-response paradigm typically ask participants to continuously alternate between intuitive ("fast") and deliberate ("slow") responding. One concern is that repeated deliberation in these studies will artificially boost the intuitive, "fast" reasoning performance. A recent alternative two-block paradigm therefore advised to present all fast trials in one block before the slow trials were presented. Here we tested directly whether allowing people to repeatedly deliberate will boost their intuitive reasoning performance by manipulating the order of the fast and slow blocks. In each block participants solved variants of the bat-and-ball problem. Maximum response time in fast blocks was 4s and 25s in the slow blocks. One group solved the fast trials before the slow trials, a second group solved the slow trials first, and a third mixed group alternated between slow and fast trials. Results showed that the order factor did not affect accuracy on the fast trials. This indicates that repeated deliberation does not boost people's intuitive reasoning performance.

International audience; Although human thinking is often biased by erroneous intuitions, recent de-bias studies suggest that people’s performance can be boosted by short training interventions, where the correct answers to reasoning problems are explained. However, the nature of this training effect remains unclear. Does training help participants correct erroneous intuitions through deliberation? Or does it help them develop correct intuitions? We addressed this issue in three studies, by focusing on the well-known Bat-and-Ball problem. We used a two-response paradigm in which participants first gave an initial intuitive response, under time pressure and cognitive load, and then gave a final response after deliberation. Studies 1 and 2 showed that not only did training boost performance, it did so as early as the intuitive stage. After training, most participants solved the problems correctly from the outset and no longer needed to correct an initial incorrect answer through deliberation. Study 3 indicated that this sound intuiting sustained over at least two months. The findings confirm that a short training can boost sound reasoning at an intuitive stage. We discuss key theoretical and applied implications.

International audience; One of the key components of the susceptibility to cognitive biases is the ability to monitor for conflict that may arise between intuitively cued "heuristic" answers and logical principles. While there is evidence that people differ in their ability to detect such conflicts, it is not clear which individual factors are driving these differences. In the present large-scale study (N = 399) we explored the role of cognitive ability, thinking dispositions, numeracy, cognitive reflection, and mindware instantiation (i.e. knowledge of logical principles) as potential predictors of individual differences in conflict detection ability and overall accuracy on a battery of reasoning problems. Results showed that mindware instantiation was the single best predictor of both conflict detection efficiency and reasoning accuracy. Cognitive reflection, thinking dispositions, numeracy, and cognitive ability played a significant but smaller role. The full regression model accounted for 40% of the variance in overall reasoning accuracy, but only 7% of the variance in conflict detection efficiency. We discuss the implications of these findings for popular process models of bias susceptibility.

International audience; Cognitive capacity is commonly assumed to predict performance in classic reasoning tasks because people higher in cognitive capacity are believed to be better at deliberately correcting biasing erroneous intuitions. However, recent findings suggest that there can also be a positive correlation between cognitive capacity and correct intuitive thinking. Here we present results from 2 studies that directly contrasted whether cognitive capacity is more predictive of having correct intuitions or successful deliberate correction of an incorrect intuition. We used a two-response paradigm in which people were required to give a fast intuitive response under time pressure and cognitive load and afterwards were given the time to deliberate. We used a direction-of-change analysis to check whether correct responses were generated intuitively or whether they resulted from deliberate correction (i.e., an initial incorrect-to-correct final response change). Results showed that although cognitive capacity was associated with the correction tendency (overall r = .13) it primarily predicted correct intuitive responding (overall r = .42). These findings force us to rethink the nature of sound reasoning and the role of cognitive capacity in reasoning. Rather than being good at deliberately correcting erroneous intuitions, smart reasoners simply seem to have more accurate intuitions.

Although a good rational number understanding is very important, many learners struggle to understand fractions. Recent research attributes many of these difficulties to the natural number bias – the tendency to apply natural number features in rational number tasks where this is inappropriate. Previous correlational dual process studies found evidence for the intuitive nature of the natural number bias in learners’ response latencies. However, the reported correlations do not ascertain the causality that is assumed in this ascription. In the present study we therefore experimentally elicited intuitive responses in a fraction comparison task in educated adults by restricting reaction time. Results show that the natural number bias has an intuitive character. Findings also indicate that the detection of conflict between the natural number-based answer and the correct answer seems to work at an intuitive level. ispartof: Memory & Cognition vol:48 issue:7 pages:1171-1180 ispartof: location:United States status: Published online

National audience; Some economic transactions require people to trust strangers, whose trustworthiness is unknown. In these circumstances, behavioral studies have shown that adults (but not young adolescents) seem to have some minimal ability to detect the trustworthiness of adult strangers based on their facial features. In this study, we explored the neural correlates of this facial trustworthiness detection. A group of adolescents and adults played a series of economic Trust Games with adult trustees of which we had previously recorded the strategy. Results showed that when adult investors were looking at the picture of a trust-abusing trustee, the left amygdala was relatively more activated than when they were looking at a trust-honoring player. Younger adolescents did not show this pattern and responded with a more pronounced deactivation when facing a trust-abusing trustee. An exploratory whole-brain analysis detected a similar age shift for mentalizing regions of the brain. Our results fit with an emerging model suggesting that the amygdala is implicated in an associative learning process that progressively refines a mapping of faces onto trustworthy behavior and may result in avoiding to be exploited by untrustworthy strangers.

International audience; In this commentary, I highlight the relevance of Cushman's target paper for the popular dual process framework of thinking. I point to the problematic characterization of rationalization in traditional dual process models and suggest that in line with recent advances, Cushman's rational rationalization account offers a way out of the rationalization paradox. MAIN TEXT The dual process framework (e.g., Evans & Stanovich, 2013; Kahneman, 2011) has long conceived human thinking as an interplay of fast and intuitive processing ("System 1" thinking) and slower, more demanding deliberate processing ("System 2" thinking). The characterization of rationalization in this popular framework is often problematic. On one hand, rationalization is typically conceived as epiphenomenal. It is considered as a mere "making-up-excuses-after-the-facts" in which reasoners post hoc look for justifications for an (often inappropriate) intuitively cued choice. For example, one might think here of classic reasoning and heuristics-and-biases tasks in which people fail to correct biasing intuitions but are afterwards all too eager to find reasons to support their (erroneous) intuition (e.g., Evans & Wason, 1976; Kahneman, 2011). As such, rationalization would have no functional "rational" role to play in sound reasoning. At the same time, dual process theorists also tend to characterize rationalization as a deliberate (System 2) process. Indeed, people often spend considerable time and effort to come up with justifications and rationalize their answers (Pennycook, Fugelsang & Koehler, 2015; Wason & Evans

International audience; Dual process models of higher cognition have become very influential in the cognitive sciences. The popular Default-Interventionist model has long favored a serial view on the interaction between intuitive and deliberative processing (or System 1 and System 2). Recent work has led to an alternative hybrid model view in which people's intuitive reasoning performance is assumed to be determined by the absolute and relative strength of competing intuitions. In the present study, we tested unique new predictions to validate the hybrid model. We adopted a two-response paradigm with popular base-rate neglect problems in which baserate information and a stereotypical description could cue conflicting responses. By manipulating the extremity of the base-rates in our problems we aimed to affect the strength of the "logical" intuition that is hypothesized to cue selection of the base-rate response. The two-response paradigm-in which people were required to give an initial response under time-pressure and cognitive load-allowed us to identify the presumed intuitively generated response. Consistent with the hybrid model predictions, we observed that experimentally reducing the strength of the logical intuition decreased the number of initial base-rate responses when solving problems in which base-rates and stereotypical information conflicted. Critically, reasoners who gave an initial stereotypical response were less likely to register the intrinsic conflict (as reflected in decreased confidence) in this case, whereas reasoners who gave an initial base-rate response registered more conflict. Implications and remaining challenges for dual process theorizing are discussed.

Since reasoning is often biased by intuitive heuristics, the development of sound reasoning has long been postulated to depend on successful bias monitoring and inhibition. The present fMRI study aimed to identify neural correlates of developmental changes in these processes. A group of adults and young adolescents were presented with ratio-bias problems in which an intuitively cued heuristic response could be incongruent (conflict item) or congruent (no-conflict item) with the correct response. Results showed that successfully avoiding biased responding on conflict items across both age groups was associated with increased activation in Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) and the right Lateral Prefrontal Cortex (LPFC) regions of interest. Critically, the right LPFC activation decreased with age. Biased responding did not result in right LPFC or ACC modulation and failed to show any developmental activation changes. We discuss implications for ongoing debates on the nature of heuristic bias and its development.

Studies on human reasoning have long established that intuitions can bias inference and lead to violations of logical norms. Popular dual-process models, which characterize thinking as an interaction between intuitive (System 1) and deliberate (System 2) thought processes, have presented an appealing explanation for this observation. According to this account, logical reasoning is traditionally considered as a prototypical example of a task that requires effortful deliberate thinking. In recent years, however, a number of findings obtained with new experimental paradigms have brought into question the traditional dual-process characterization. A key observation is that people can process logical principles in classic reasoning tasks intuitively and without deliberation. We review the paradigms and sketch how this work is leading to the development of revised dual-process models.

In the last decade conflict detection studies in the reasoning and decision-making field have suggested that biased reasoners who give an intuitive response that conflicts with logico-mathematical principles can often detect that their answer is questionable. In the present studies we introduced a second guess paradigm to test the nature and specificity of this error or conflict signal. Participants solved the bat-and-ball problem and were allowed to make a second guess after they had entered their answer. Three studies in which we used a range of second guess elicitation methods show that biased reasoners predominantly give second guesses that are smaller than the intuitively cued heuristic response ("10 cents"). Findings indicate that although biased reasoners do not know the exact correct answer ("5 cents") they do correctly grasp that the right answer must be smaller than the intuitively cued "10 cents" answer. This suggests that reasoners might be savvier about their errors than traditionally assumed. Implications for the conflict detection and dual process literature are discussed.

International audience; Influential work on reasoning and decision making has popularized the idea that sound reasoning requires correction of fast, intuitive thought processes by slower and more demanding deliberation. We present seven studies that question this corrective view of human thinking. We focused on the very problem that has been widely featured as the paradigmatic illustration of the corrective view, the well-known bat-and-ball problem. A two-response paradigm in which people were required to give an initial response under time-pressure and cognitive load allowed us to identify the presumed intuitive response that preceded the final response given after deliberation. Across our studies we observe that correct final responses are often non-corrective in nature. Many reasoners who manage to answer the bat-and-ball problem correctly after deliberation already solved it correctly when they reasoned under conditions that minimized deliberation in the initial response phase. This suggests that sound bat-and-ball reasoners do not necessarily need to deliberate to correct their intuitions, their intuitions are often already correct. Pace the corrective view, findings suggest that in these cases they deliberate to verify correct intuitive insights.

Moral dilemmas often force us to decide between deontological (harming others is wrong) and utilitarian (harming others can be acceptable depending on the consequences) considerations. Cognitive scientists have shown that utilitarian responders typically engage demanding deliberate thinking to override a conflicting intuitive deontological response. A key question is whether deontic responders also take utilitarian considerations into account and detect that there are conflicting responses at play. The present study addressed this issue by contrasting people's processing of moral dilemmas in which utilitarian and deontological considerations cued conflicting or non-conflicting decisions. Results showed that deontic responders were slower and less confident about their decision when solving the conflict (vs. no-conflict) dilemmas. This suggests that they are considering both deontic and utilitarian aspects of their decision and indicates that a deontic decision is more informed and less oblivious t...

Performance on heuristics and bias tasks has been shown to be susceptible to bias. In turn, susceptibility to bias varies as a function of individual differences in cognitive abilities (e.g., intelligence) and thinking styles (e.g., propensity for reflection). Using a classic task (i.e., lawyer–engineer problem), we conducted two experiments to examine the differential contributions of cognitive abilities versus thinking styles to performance. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT)—a well-established measure of reflective thinking—predicted performance on conflict problems (where base rates and intuition point in opposite directions), whereas STM predicted performance on nonconflict problems. Experiment 2 conducted in the fMRI scanner replicated this behavioral dissociation and enabled us to probe their neural correlates. As predicted, conflict problems were associated with greater activation in the ACC—a key region for conflict detection—even in cases when participants responded stereotypically. In participants with higher CRT scores, conflict problems were associated with greater activation in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and activation in PCC covaried in relation to CRT scores during conflict problems. Also, CRT scores predicted activation in PCC in conflict problems (over and above nonconflict problems). Our results suggest that individual differences in reflective thinking as measured by CRT are related to brain activation in PCC—a region involved in regulating attention between external and internal foci. We discuss the implications of our findings in terms of PCC's possible involvement in switching from intuitive to analytic mode of thought.

Popular dual process models have characterized reasoning as an interplay between fast, intuitive (System 1) and slow, deliberate (System 2) processes, but the precise nature of the interaction between the two systems is much debated. Here we relied on the temporal resolution of electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings to decide between different models. We adopted base-rate problems in which an intuitively cued stereotypical response was either congruent or incongruent with the correct response that was cued by the base-rates. Results showed that solving problems in which the base-rates and stereotypical description cued conflicting responses resulted in an increased centro-parietal N2 and frontal P3. This early conflict sensitivity suggests that the critical base-rates can be processed fast without slow and deliberate System 2 reflection. Findings validate prior EEG work and support recent hybrid dual process models in which the fast System 1 is processing both heuristic belief-based responses (e.g., stereotypes) and elementary logico-mathematical principles (e.g., base-rates).