Influential ‘fast-and-slow’ dual process models suggest that sound reasoning requires the correction of fast, intuitive thought processes by slower, controlled deliberation. Recent findings with high-level reasoning tasks started to question this characterization. Here we tested the generalizability of these findings to low-level cognitive control tasks. More specifically, we examined whether people who responded accurately to the classic Stroop and Flanker tasks could also do so when their deliberate control was minimized. A two-response paradigm, in which people were required to give an initial ‘fast’ response under time–pressure and cognitive load, allowed us to identify the presumed intuitive answer that preceded the final ‘slow’ response given after deliberation. Across our studies, we consistently find that correct final Stroop and Flanker responses are often non-corrective in nature. Good performance in cognitive control tasks seems to be driven by accurate ‘fast’ intuitive processing, rather than by ‘slow’ controlled correction of these intuitions. We also explore the association between Stroop and reasoning performance and discuss implications for the dual process view of human cognition.

In this paper, we show that the presence of numbers in a problem tempts people to perform mathematical operations even when the correct answer requires no math, which we term “mindless math”. In three pre-registered studies across two survey platforms (total N = 3,193), we investigate how mindless math relates to perceived problem difficulty, problem representation, and accuracy. In Study 1, we show that increasing the numeric demands of problems leads to more mindless math (and fewer correct answers). Study 2 shows that this effect is not caused by people being wary of problems that seem too easy. In Study 3, we show that this effect is robust over a wider range of numeric demands, and in the discussion we offer two possible mechanisms that would explain this effect, and the caveat that at even harder levels of numeric demands the effect may invert such that much harder math increases accuracy relative to moderately hard math.

We employed simple gambles to investigate information processing in relation to the compatibility effect. Subjects should be more likely to engage in a deliberative thinking strategy when completing a pricing task rather than a rating task. We used eye-tracking methodology to measure information acquisition and processing in order to test the above hypothesis as well as to show that losses and alternatives with uncertain outcomes are more likely than gains and alternatives with sure outcomes to be processed through a deliberative thinking process. Results showed that pupil dilations, fixation duration and number of fixations increased when subjects evaluated the gambles with a pricing task. Additionally, the number of fixations increased as the gamble outcome became increasingly negative and when the outcome was uncertain (vs. sure). Fixations were also predictive of subjects’ final evaluations of the gambles. We discuss our results in light of the cognitive processes underlying different response modes in economic preferences.

Why is misleading partisan content believed and shared? An influential account posits that political partisanship pervasively biases reasoning, such that engaging in analytic thinking exacerbates motivated reasoning and, in turn, the acceptance of hyperpartisan content. Alternatively, it may be that susceptibility to hyperpartisan content is explained by a lack of reasoning. Across two studies using different participant pools (total N = 1,973 Americans), we had participants assess true, false, and hyperpartisan news headlines taken from social media. We found no evidence that analytic thinking was associated with judging politically consistent hyperpartisan or false headlines to be accurate and unbiased. Instead, analytic thinking was, in most cases, associated with an increased tendency to distinguish true headlines from both false and hyperpartisan headlines (and was never associated with decreased discernment). These results suggest that reasoning typically helps people differentiate between low and high quality political news, rather than facilitate belief in misleading content. Because social media play an important role in the dissemination of misinformation, we also investigated willingness to share headlines on social media. We found a similar pattern whereby analytic thinking was not generally associated with increased willingness to share hyperpartisan or false headlines. Together, these results suggest a positive role for reasoning in resisting misinformation.

Combining meaning, memory, and development, the perennially popular topic of intuition can be approached in a new way. Fuzzy-trace theory integrates these topics by distinguishing between meaning-based gist representations, which support fuzzy (yet advanced) intuition, and superficial verbatim representations of information, which support precise analysis. Here, I review the counterintuitive findings that led to the development of the theory and its most recent extensions to the neuroscience of risky decision making. These findings include memory interference (worse verbatim memory is associated with better reasoning); nonnumerical framing (framing effects increase when numbers are deleted from decision problems); developmental decreases in gray matter and increases in brain connectivity; developmental reversals in memory, judgment, and decision making (heuristics and biases based on gist increase from childhood to adulthood, challenging conceptions of rationality); and selective attention effects that provide critical tests comparing fuzzy-trace theory, expected utility theory, and its variants (e.g., prospect theory). Surprising implications for judgment and decision making in real life are also discussed, notably, that adaptive decision making relies mainly on gist-based intuition in law, medicine, and public health.

Due to the information overload in today’s digital age, people maysometimes feel pressured to process and judge information especially fast. Inthree experiments, we examined whether time pressure increases therepetition-based truth effect — the tendency to judge repeatedlyencountered statements more likely as “true” than novelstatements. Based on the Heuristic-Systematic Model, a dual-process model in thefield of persuasion research, we expected that time pressure would boost thetruth effect by increasing reliance on processing fluency as a presumablyheuristic cue for truth, and by decreasing knowledge retrieval as a presumablyslow and systematic process that determines truth judgments. However, contraryto our expectation, time pressure did not moderate the truth effect.Importantly, this was the case for difficult statements, for which most peoplelack prior knowledge, as well as for easy statements, for which most people holdrelevant knowledge. Overall, the findings clearly speak against the conceptionof fast, fluency-based truth judgments versus slow, knowledge-based truthjudgments. In contrast, the results are compatible with a referential theory ofthe truth effect that does not distinguish between different types of truthjudgments. Instead, it assumes that truth judgments rely on the coherence oflocalized networks in people’s semantic memory, formed by both repetitionand prior knowledge.

Nudge plus is a modification of the toolkit of behavioral public policy. It incorporates an element of reflection – the plus – into the delivery of a nudge, either blended in or made proximate. Nudge plus builds on recent work combining heuristics and deliberation. It may be used to design prosocial interventions that help preserve the autonomy of the agent. The argument turns on seminal work on dual systems, which presents a subtler relationship between fast and slow thinking than commonly assumed in the classic literature in behavioral public policy. We review classic and recent work on dual processes to show that a hybrid is more plausible than the default-interventionist or parallel-competitive framework. We define nudge plus, set out what reflection could entail, provide examples, outline causal mechanisms, and draw testable implications.

In the course of their work, psychologists must make judgments and complex decisions, skills that are part of clinical reasoning. Recent models approach the analysis of such process using the dual-process theories framework. This study provides an assessment of the two systems, System 1 and System 2, in forty-five clinical psychologists with different levels of experience (novices, intermediates and experts) with the purpose of exploring their level of activation and evolution throughout such stages of expertise. According to the results, clinical psychologists mainly activate System 2, M = 70.91, SD = 6.71, than System 1, M = 60.49, SD = 3.78; $ {F}_{\left(1,\kern0.5em 41\right)}=7.99;p<.01;{\upeta}^2=.163, $ when performing their clinical duties. However, no significant changes have been observed regarding the preferential use of thinking Systems 1 or 2 throughout the experience, both systems are used in a similar way in the different levels of expertise analyzed, with an increase of System 2 at the intermediate level of expertise. The results are analyzed in terms of intermediate effect and discussed focusing on the unremitting need for System 2 in psychologist work given the idiosyncratic characteristics of each case requiring treatment in the area of psychology and on the relationship of the two systems in clinical reasoning.

Design research faces a critical 'impact gap' where the potential for scientific and practical impact is yet to be fully realised. A key means of bridging this gap is the adoption of fundamental theory from other fields to support clarification and synergy in design research. In this paper we examine one of the main candidates for adoption: dual-process theory of cognition. Cognition forms a common element across much of the design literature and leads to fundamental dual-process theories of reasoning. While dual- process theory has started to be recognised in design research, its widespread recognition and potential utility have not been widely explored. Following a conceptual theory development approach we identify and logically describe interactions between dual-process theory and design research. We conclude the paper with a proposition of a design research framework with a core rooted in dual-process theory, and based on this, an agenda for theory-driven design research. This contributes to the debate on how to improve impact, and theoretical and scientific rigour in design research, and provides a concrete agenda for discussion and development within the community.

Genetic and environmental contributions to preferences for rational and experiential thinking were examined in 100 pairs of monozygotic and 73 pairs of same-sex dizygotic Australian twins. Univariate analyses for experiential thinking and working memory capacity (WMC) revealed genetic effects accounted for 44% and 39% of the variability respectively, with non-shared environmental effects accounting for the balance. For rational thinking, the univariate models produced ambiguous results about the relative roles of heritability and shared environment, but a subsequent Cholesky analysis suggested genetic effects accounted for 34%, with the balance, 66%, explained by the non-shared environment. The Cholesky analysis revealed that shared genetic effects accounted for 60%, and non-shared environment accounted for 40% of the relationship between preference for rational thinking and WMC.