The dark side of Eureka: Artificially induced Aha moments make facts feel true

Abstract

Some ideas that we have feel mundane, but others are imbued with a sense of profundity. Here we tested the possibility that humans rely on feelings of insight in order to appraise their own ideas, the source of which is often hidden from conscious view. We began by investigating the recent finding that insight experiences predict objective problem solving performance. In Experiment 1, we measured insight experiences in real-time using a dynamometer, and found that impulsive feelings of insight (and their intensity) are strong predictors of accurate solutions to problems that typically involve implicit processing. In Experiment 2, we found that this insight-accuracy effect is also robust in a sensory identification task reminiscent of everyday life. In a third experiment, we presented participants with general knowledge ‘facts’ while eliciting insight experiences at the same time using anagrams. Participants reported greater perceived truth for facts accompanied by solved anagrams and particularly those that elicited insight experiences, even if the facts were false. Taken together, the results suggest that insight phenomenology usually contains useful information about the veracity of a solution, and that humans use this feeling heuristically to appraise new ideas. However, so-called Aha! moments can be overgeneralized, and bias truth judgments regarding a temporally coincident but otherwise irrelevant fact. We conclude by discussing potential side effects of relying on phenomenology to evaluate ideas, including false beliefs and dangerous ideologies.

Commentary: Moment of (Perceived) Truth: Exploring Accuracy of Aha! Experiences

“…In this case, they needed to unscramble the word kgraaoosn (kangaroos). The results indicate that when participants solved the anagram successfully, they were more likely to believe the claim was true and this effect was particularly pronounced when they also reported an aha experience (see also Laukkonen et al, 2018). The most probable explanation for this finding is that the aha experience triggered by the anagram was misattributed to the initial claim such that the statement now seemed, to the participant, to be more true.…”

“…Danek and Salvi (2018) note erroneous insights in their paper, in reference to Ohlsson's (1984 p. 124) term and discussion of erroneous insights. This issue was also raised recently by Laukkonen et al (2018), who used the term insight fallacy. However, there are as yet little data within the insight literature regarding erroneous insights (Danek & Wiley, 2017; Webb, Cropper, & Little, 2018).…”

Second-guessing of Spinoza: Psychophysiological and behavioral evidence that believing is default during proposition comprehension

“…Thus, familiarity is an inadequate designation for high EDA magnitudes that denote truth during true/false recognition memory tests. "Aha" emotions with more direct associations to truth (Laukkonen, Ingledew, et al, 2018;Laukkonen et al, 2020) are more apt for the high magnitude EDA results of Study 3.…”

“…Like familiarity, "aha" is a positive valanced emotion that is associated with certainty and easiness (Shen et al, 2018). Self-reported "aha" experiences robustly predict correct answers (Salvi et al, 2016;Webb et al, 2018) with large effect sizes to problem accuracy (d = 1.64) and self-rated confidence (d = 1.87, Laukkonen, Ingledew, et al, 2018). Importantly, "aha" also biases truth judgments to both true and false propositions when artificially-induced (Laukkonen et al, 2020).…”

The Science of Mindfulness-Based Interventions and Learning: A Review for Educators

“…Emotions can guide learning by influencing perception, attention and motivation (Immordino-Yang, & Damasio, 2007). Emotions also play a role in facilitating encoding and retrieval of relevant information (Tyng, Hafeez, Mohamad, & Aamir, 2017), and are themselves important sources of information during decision-making (Schwarz, 2010;Laukkonen et al, 2018). Practicing mindfulness meditation may increase sensitivity to early affective cues (Teper, Segal, & Inzlicht, 2013), thereby facilitating self-regulatory executive control at early levels of the emotional response and may thereby improve emotional regulation.…”