Logic, Fast and Slow: Advances in Dual-Process Theorizing

Abstract

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 questioned 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.

Predicting individual differences in conflict detection and bias susceptibility during reasoning

“…Further, the likelihood of conflict detection and subsequent engagement in analytic type 2 processing has been thought to be determined by the relative strength of the logical and heuristic intuition. Specifically, it is assumed that conflict detection likelihood will be maximal when the strength of the two intuitively cued outputs is maximally similar (Bago & De Neys, 2019a;De Neys & Pennycook, 2019;Pennycook et al, 2015). However, as for most biased reasoners the heuristic intuition will be typically stronger than the logical one, correct responding on conflict reasoning tasks for them will require the analytic type 2 processing to override the dominant heuristic intuition.…”

“…More specifically, given that the conflict detection likelihood is assumed to depend on the relative strength of one's heuristic and/or logical intuitions (Pennycook et al, 2015;Bago & De Neys, 2019a;De Neys & Pennycook, 2019), these relative strengths might show much more variability across different reasoning tasks and/or even across different item contents of a single task. As is clear from the traditional group and individual-level conflict detection analyses both in the present study and in previous works (e.g., Frey & De Neys, 2017;, there is quite some variability in detection effects observed across different tasks.…”

“…Given the conflict detection findings, it appeared that people are quickly and effortlessly processing the logical structure of reasoning tasks to detect that their intuition is in conflict with it (De Neys, 2012, 2013, 2017. As these results were not a priori predicted by traditional default-interventionist models (e.g., Evans & Stanovich, 2013;Kahneman, 2011;Stanovich & West, 2008), several authors more recently moved on to advocate so-called hybrid dual process models (Bago & De Neys, 2019a;De Neys & Pennycook, 2019;Pennycook, et al, 2015;Thompson & Newman, 2017). While the details of these accounts may differ, they all share the core idea that when people face conflict reasoning tasks, they quickly generate several intuitive responses based on heuristics as well as the logical structure of the problem.…”

Untitled

“…Однако легитимность этих критических замечаний продолжает активно обсуждаться (Thompson, Newman, 2018;Melnikoff, Bargh, 2018;Bago, De Neys, 2019;De Neys, Pennycook, 2019), авторы оспаривают аргументы друг друга. В связи с этим на данный момент затруднительно определить статус двухпроцессных и двухсистемных моделей в данной исследовательской области.…”

Morality, Normativity, and the Good System 2 Fallacy

“…2 This literature suggested that biases in classic reasoning tasks were often associated with the operation of the intuitive System 1, whereas correct responding in line with traditional logical and probabilistic norms was associated with the successful engagement of the deliberate System 2. As I will clarify in more detail below, this association has led to the errone- De Neys, Pennycook (2019); for an excellent historical account see Frankish, Evans (2009). ous assumption that System 2 processing is by defi nition normatively correct (i.e., the normative fallacy) 1 .…”