Anxiety‐induced miscalculations, more than differential inhibition of intuition, explain the gender gap in cognitive reflection

Abstract

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is among the most common and well‐known instruments for measuring the propensity to engage reflective processing, in the context of the dual‐process theory of high‐level cognition. There is robust evidence that men perform better than women on this test—but we should be wary to conclude that men are more likely to engage in reflective processing than women. We consider several possible loci for the gender difference in CRT performance, and use mathematical modeling to show, across two studies, that the gender difference in CRT performance is more likely due to women making more mathematical mistakes (partially explained by their greater mathematics anxiety) than due to women being less likely to engage reflective processing. As a result, we argue that we need to use gender‐equivalent variants of the CRT, both to improve the quality of our instruments and to fulfill our social responsibility as scientists.

Measuring Cognitive Reflection without Maths: Development and Validation of the Verbal Cognitive Reflection Test

“…The remaining weak association with numeracy should be investigated in future research but it is likely because both the Verbal CRT and Numeracy are partly fuelled by the same general abilities (e.g., cognitive ability, working memory). A likely consequence of the weaker association with numeracy (Juanchich et al, 2018;Primi et al, 2018) is that the Verbal CRT is free from gender bias. We believe that this is a desirable property of any test and is also important for the fair evaluation of gender differences in cognitive reflection (AERA et al, 2014).…”

“…Numeracy confounds the cognitive reflection in the Numerical CRT, which manifests itself in the gender differencewomen do not perform as well as men in the CRT (Juanchich et al, 2018;Primi et al, 2018). We treat this gender difference as a type of measurement bias (hereafter, gender bias), because women do not perform as well as men due to mathematical anxiety and numeracy but not due to lower cognitive reflection abilities.…”

“…The CRT rapidly gained popularity due to its impressive power to predict how well people reason, judge, and decide as well as to predict what they believe in (for a review see consistently perform less well in the CRT than males (e.g., a meta-study of 118 studies, Brañas-Garza, Kujal, & Lenkei, 2015). Recent evidence suggests that this is due to gender differences in mathematical ability and related mathematical anxiety rather than differences in cognitive reflection (Juanchich, Sirota, & Bonnefon, 2018;Primi, Donati, Chiesi, & Morsanyi, 2018).…”

“…How many are left? Intuitive answer: 7; correct answer: 8"), which could still be a problem due to the mathematical anxiety that such problems might trigger (e.g., Juanchich et al, 2018;Primi et al, 2018). In addition, the psychometric properties of the measure were still suboptimal (e.g., Cronbach's α was around 0.5).…”

Measuring cognitive reflection without maths: Development and validation of the verbal cognitive reflection test

“…It also leads to other undesirable consequences such as the gender performance gap: females consistently perform less well in the CRT than males (e.g., a meta-study of 118 studies, Brañas-Garza, Kujal, & Lenkei, 2019). Recent evidence suggests that this is due to gender differences in mathematical ability and related mathematical anxiety rather than differences in cognitive reflection (Juanchich, Sirota, & Bonnefon, 2020;Primi, Donati, Chiesi, & Morsanyi, 2018).…”