Reasoning strategies explain individual differences in social reasoning.

Abstract

The dual-strategy model of reasoning suggests that when people reason they can either use (a) a statistical strategy which generates an estimation of conclusion likelihood using a rapid form of associative processing or (b) a counterexample strategy which identifies potential counterexamples to a conclusion using a more conscious working memory intensive process. Previous results suggest that strategy use is a strong individual difference that represents a broad distinction in the way that information is processed that goes beyond deductive reasoning. In 3 studies, we examined if this model could predict individual differences in the processing of social information by examining socially relevant cognitive biases. Study 1 found that strategy use predicted the extent of the self-serving bias. Study 2 found that strategy use predicted use of racist stereotypes even when need for closure was accounted for. Study 3 found that an essentialist prime resulted in a higher level of gender bias among statistical reasoners but that this prime had no effect on counterexample reasoners. These results indicate that the processing distinction between the 2 reasoning strategies underlies individual differences in social biases such as stereotypes, sexism, and racism.

Reasoning strategies determine the effect of disconfirmation on belief in false claims

“…These results add to the growing body of evidence that individual differences in strategy use are an important determinant of information processing in a variety of different contexts (e.g., Gagnon-St-Pierre et al, 2020;Markovits et al, 2018, b). These results also add some weight to existing analyses of the effects of simple repetition on people's beliefs in claims for which they have no real prior knowledge.…”

“…This leads them to process similar information in different ways. For example, a recent study has shown that when given a text that supports the existence of gender differences, Statistical reasoners show higher degrees of sexist attitudes, while Counterexample reasoners do not (Gagnon-St-Pierre et al, 2020). Thus, one explanation of the present results would be that Statistical reasoners simply consider the single disconfirmation as another source of information that is weighted equally to that of the repeated claims, while Counterexample reasoners construct a more focused model of this information for which disconfirmation has a much stronger weight.…”

“…This is in fact the case. Strategy use has been shown to influence gender differences in both emotion processing (Markovits, Trémolière, & Blanchette, 2018) and mental rotation (Markovits, 2019), and has been shown to predict individual differences in a wide array of social biases (Gagnon-St-Pierre et al, 2020). These results suggest that the distinction between statistical and counterexample reasoners captures a basic difference in the way that people process a broad array of information.…”

Reasoning strategies predict use of very fast logical reasoning

“…Finally, these results add to a growing base of empirical results that are consistent with the idea that strategy use is an important individual difference. The fact that such differences have been observed not only with standard deductive reasoning tasks but also with belief-biased reasoning (de Chantal et al, 2019;Markovits et al, 2017), judgements involving processing of negative emotions (Markovits, Trémolière, & Blanchette, 2018b), mental rotation tasks (Markovits, 2019), and social biases (Gagnon-St-Pierre et al, 2020) and now with very fast reasoning, suggests that strategy use is a determinant of differences in the more general processing of information, one that goes well beyond standard deductive reasoning tasks.…”

Can we change how people reason? Effects of instructions to reason differently and reasoning strategy.

“…In fact, a recent study has found that under time pressure, reasoning strategy is a much stronger predictor of performance than cognitive capacity (Markovits et al, 2021). In addition, reasoning strategy has been shown to predict performance on a variety of very different forms of judgments, including gender differences in negative emotion processing (Markovits, Trémolière, & Blanchette, 2018) and spatial rotation (Markovits, 2019), general differences in susceptibility to a variety of biases (Gagnon-St-Pierre et al, 2020), and the extent to which disconfirmation reduces belief in fake news (Gratton & Markovits, 2021).…”