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ABSTRACT In recent years, a growing body of experimental literature has called into question the reliability of our intuitions about hypothetical cases, and thereby called into question the use of [...]

Recent models of cognition include two processing systems: an automatic system that relies on associative learning, intuition, and heuristics, and a controlled system that relies on deliberate consideration. Automatic processing requires fewer resources and is more likely when resources are depleted. This study showed that prolonged practice on a resource-depleting mental arithmetic task promoted automatic processing on a subsequent problem-solving task, as evidenced by faster responding and more errors. Distribution of practice effects (0, 60, 120, or 180 sec. between problems) on rigidity also disappeared when groups had equal time on resource-depleting tasks. These results suggest that distribution of practice effects is reducible to resource availability. The discussion includes implications for interpreting discrepancies in the traditional distribution of practice effect. DOI 10.2466/04.22.PR0.107.6.860-872

How do people balance intuition and reason when making decisions? We report 6 studies that indicate that people are cued by the features of the decision problem to follow intuition or reason when making their choice. That is, when features of the choice resemble features commonly associated with rational processing, people tend to decide on the basis of reason; when features of the choice match those associated with intuitive processing, people tend to decide on the basis of intuition. Choices that are seen as objectively evaluable (Study I A), sequential (Studies 1B and 3), complex (Study 2), or precise (Study 4) elicit a preference for choosing rationally. This framework accurately predicts people's choices in variants of both the ratio-bias (Study 3) and ambiguity-aversion paradigms (Study 4). Discussion focuses on the relationship between the task cuing account, other decision-making models, and dual-process accounts of cognition. Keywords: intuition, reason, rationality, choice DOI: 10.1037/a0020215

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2009.04.010 Byline: Alethea Blackler (a), Vesna Popovic (a), Doug Mahar (b) Abstract: This paper examines the role of intuition in the way that people operate unfamiliar devices. Intuition is a type of cognitive processing that is often non-conscious and utilises stored experiential knowledge. Intuitive interaction involves the use of knowledge gained from other products and/or experiences. Two initial experimental studies revealed that prior exposure to products employing similar features helped participants to complete set tasks more quickly and intuitively, and that familiar features were intuitively used more often than unfamiliar ones. A third experiment confirmed that performance is affected by a person's level of familiarity with similar technologies, and also revealed that appearance (shape, size and labelling of features) seems to be the variable that most affects time spent on a task and intuitive uses during that time. Age also seems to have an effect. These results and their implications are discussed. Author Affiliation: (a) School of Design, Queensland University of Technology, Level 5 D block, Gardens Point Campus 2, George St., GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, Queensland 4001, Australia (b) School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, Queensland 4001, Australia Article History: Received 15 December 2006; Accepted 17 April 2009

This article reports on an effort to explore the differences between two approaches to intuition and expertise that are often viewed as conflicting: heuristics and biases (HB) and naturalistic decision making (NDM). Starting from the obvious fact that professional intuition is sometimes marvelous and sometimes flawed, the authors attempt to map the boundary conditions that separate true intuitive skill from overconfident and biased impressions. They conclude that evaluating the likely quality of an intuitive judgment requires an assessment of the predictability of the environment in which the judgment is made and of the individual's opportunity to learn the regularities of that environment. Subjective experience is not a reliable indicator of judgment accuracy. Keywords: intuition, expertise, overconfidence, heuristics, judgment

People can intuitively detect whether a word triad has a common remote associate (coherent) or does not have one (incoherent) before and independently of actually retrieving the common associate. The authors argue that semantic coherence increases the processing fluency for coherent triads and that this increased fluency triggers a brief and subtle positive affect, which is the experiential basis of these intuitions. In a series of 11 experiments with 3 different fluency manipulations (figure-ground contrast, repeated exposure, and subliminal visual priming) and 3 different affect inductions (short-timed facial feedback, subliminal facial priming, and affect-laden word triads), high fluency and positive affect independently and additively increased the probability that triads would be judged as coherent, irrespective of actual coherence. The authors could equalize and even reverse coherence judgments (i.e., incoherent triads were judged to be coherent more frequently than were coherent triads). When explicitly instructed, participants were unable to correct their judgments for the influence of affect, although they were aware of the manipulation. The impact of fluency and affect was also generalized to intuitions of visual coherence and intuitions of grammaticality in an artificial grammar learning paradigm. Keywords: intuition, processing fluency, remote associates, artificial grammar learning, visual coherence

Recent research has revealed a series of striking limits to visual perception. One important aspect of these demonstrations is the degree to which they conflict with intuition; people often believe that they will be able to see things that experiments demonstrate they cannot see. This metacognitive error has been explored with reference to a few specific visual limits, but no study has yet explored people's intuitions about vision more generally. In this article we present the results of a broad survey of these intuitions. Results replicate previous overestimates and underestimates of visual performance and document new misestimates of performance in tasks that assess inattention blindness and visual knowledge. We also completed an initial exploratory factor analysis of the items and found that estimates of visual performance for well-structured information tend to covary. These results represent an important initial step in organizing the intuitions that may prove important in a variety of settings, including performance of complex visual tasks, evaluation of others people's visual experience, and even the teaching of psychology.

Historians of science have pointed to essentialist beliefs about species as major impediments to the discovery of natural selection. The present study investigated whether such beliefs are impediments to learning this concept as well. Participants (43 children aged 4-9 and 34 adults) were asked to judge the variability of various behavioral and anatomical properties across different members of the same species. Adults who accepted within-species variation--both actual and potential--were significantly more likely to demonstrate a selection-based understanding of evolution than adults who denied within-species variation. The latter demonstrated an alternative, incorrect understanding of evolution and produced response patterns that were both quantitatively and qualitatively similar to those produced by preschool-aged children. Overall, it is argued that psychological essentialism, although a useful bias for drawing species-wide inductions, leads individuals to devalue within-species variation and, consequently, to fail to understand natural selection. Keywords: Conceptual development; Psychological essentialism; Intuitive theories; Folk biology; Science education

It has been repeatedly shown that in decisions under time constraints, individuals predominantly use noncompensatory strategies rather than complex compensatory ones. The authors argue that these findings might be due not to limitations of cognitive capacity but instead to limitations of information search imposed by the commonly used experimental tool Mouselab (J. W. Payne, J. R. Bettman, & E. J. Johnson, 1988). The authors tested this assumption in 3 experiments. In the 1st experiment, information was openly presented, whereas in the 2nd experiment, the standard Mouselab program was used under different time limits. The results indicate that individuals are able to compute weighted additive decision strategies extremely quickly if information search is not restricted by the experimental procedure. In a 3rd experiment, these results were replicated using more complex decision tasks, and the major alternative explanations that individuals use more complex heuristics or that they merely encode the constellation of cues were ruled out. In sum, the findings challenge the fundaments of bounded rationality and highlight the importance of automatic processes in decision making. Keywords: automatic information integration, one-reason decision making, probabilistic inferences, process tracing, intuition

Rational agents should integrate probabilities in their predictions about uncertain future events. However, whether humans can do this, and if so, how this ability originates, are controversial issues. Here, we show that 12-month-olds have rational expectations about the future based on estimations of event possibilities, without the need of sampling past experiences. We also show that such natural expectations influence preschoolers' reaction times, while frequencies modify motor responses, but not overt judgments, only after 4 years of age. Our results suggest that at the onset of human decision processes the mind contains an intuition of elementary probability that cannot be reduced to the encountered frequency of events or elementary heuristics.

This article challenges Yaakov Kareev's (1995a, 2000) argument regarding the positive bias of intuitive correlation estimates due to working memory capacity limitations and its adaptive value. The authors show that, under narrow window theory's primacy effect assumption, there is a considerable between-individual variability of the effects of capacity limitations on the intuitive assessment of correlation, in terms of both sign and magnitude: Limited capacity acts as an amplifier for some individuals and as a silencer for others. Furthermore, the average amount of attenuation exceeds the average amount of amplification, and the more so, the smaller the capacity. Implications regarding the applicability and contribution of the bias notion in this context and the evaluation of the adaptive value of capacity limitations are discussed. Keywords: correlation coefficient, sampling distribution, intuitive assessment, bias, narrow window theory

People often choose intuitive rather than equally valid nonintuitive alternatives. The authors suggest that these intuitive biases arise because intuitions often spring to mind with subjective ease, and the subjective ease leads people to hold their intuitions with high confidence. An investigation of predictions against point spreads found that people predicted intuitive options (favorites) more often than equally valid (or even more valid) nonintuitive alternatives (underdogs). Critically, though, this effect was largely determined by people's confidence in their intuitions (intuitive confidence). Across naturalistic, expert, and laboratory samples (Studies 1-3), against personally determined point spreads (Studies 4-11), and even when intuitive confidence was manipulated by altering irrelevant aspects of the decision context (e.g., font; Studies 12 and 13), the authors found that decreasing intuitive confidence reduced or eliminated intuitive biases. These findings indicate that intuitive biases are not inevitable but rather predictably determined by contextual variables that affect intuitive confidence. Keywords: behavioral economics, dual process, inferential correction and adjustment, decision making in sports gambling, overconfidence

Moral heuristics are pervasive, and they produce moral errors. We can identify those errors as such even if we do not endorse any contentious moral view. To accept this point, it is also unnecessary to make controversial claims about moral truth. But the notion of moral heuristics can be understood in diverse ways, and a great deal of work remains to be done in understanding the nature of moral intuitions, especially those that operate automatically and nonreflectively, and in exploring the possibility of faltering such intuitions through modest changes in context and narrative.

Early studies of intuitive judgment and decision making conducted with the late Amos Tversky are reviewed in the context of two related concepts: an analysis of accessibility, the ease with which thoughts come to mind; a distinction between effortless intuition and deliberate reasoning. Intuitive thoughts, like percepts, are highly accessible. Determinants and consequences of accessibility, help explain the central results of prospect theory, framing effects, the heuristic process of attribute substitution, and the characteristic biases that result from the substitution of nonextensional for extensional attributes. Variations in the accessibility of rules explain the occasional corrections of intuitive judgments. The study of biases is compatible with a view of intuitive thinking and decision making as generally skilled and successful.

In the context of conditional probabilities, a good example of the marked discrepancy between intuition and formal reasoning is the Monty Hall dilemma (MHD). We used the MHD to study the effects of practicing the game, making explicit the underlying structure, or enhancing the representation of the different possibilities, on reaching and stating the correct answer. The results of the experiments showed that accumulated experience with the MHD increased the proportion of switching responses but did not change erroneous intuitions (Experiment 1). However, when the dilemma was presented in the form of an adversary game that made the underlying structure more explicit, more participants formed complete mental representations that enabled them to reason correctly (Experiment 2). This result was observed even without any practice with the game if the participants were encouraged to represent possibilities (Experiment 3). Therefore, in this context, correct reasoning seems to depend more on the ability to consider different possibilities than on extensive practice with the game.

This article examines the role of intuition on effective executive decision-making in several UK retail organizations. Research uses cognitive mapping to analyze the structure and content of managerial perceptions and decision-making schemas.

This review proposes that implicit learning processes are the cognitive substrate of social intuition. This hypothesis is supported by (a) the conceptual correspondence between implicit learning and social intuition (nonverbal communication) and (b) a review of relevant neuropsychological (Huntington' s and Parkinson's disease), neuroimaging, neurophysiological, and neuroanatomical data. It is concluded that the caudate and putamen, in the basal ganglia, are central components of both intuition and implicit learning, supporting the proposed relationship. Parallel, but distinct, processes of judgment and action are demonstrated at each of the social, cognitive, and neural levels of analysis. Additionally, explicit attempts to learn a sequence can interfere with implicit learning. The possible relevance of the computations of the basal ganglia to emotional appraisal, automatic evaluation, script processing, and decision making are discussed.

A study was conducted to analyze how people discover causal mechanism involving a single cause-to-effect link. Two boundary conditions determined in the power PC theory were examined. Scenarios concerning two domains of six conditions were established to increase the generality of the study. In addition, the analogous specification of the relation between nonpositive contrasts and preventive causal power was examined.

The argument that interval strategists always consider many options acceptable to form broad goal-categories was studied. Preference structures were classified as interval or point. The goal-category range for jobs were characterized as the set of jobs selected by the subject as acceptable. It was shown that search costs in Poland were greater under central planning than under the current market economy. An interval strategy can resolve inconsistencies and generate an intuition that there are always other options by promoting substitution.

The information needs of marketing professionals are assessed in the advent of the information era characterized by the global use of the Internet. Specifically, the immense volume of information in the hands of a marketing decision-maker should offer depth and specificity that makes for better decisions. By taking into account four areas of prior knowledge, client intuitions are balanced by explicit research findings. The four areas are normative research experience, near experiences, anecdotes vs archetypes and the likely competitive response.

Research was conducted to analyze studies on higher-level strategic decision making and the importance of tacit knowledge and intuition in such processes. Logical and non-logical processes in decision making were compared against each other to determine the appropriate means of making decisions. Concerns on how learning can be determined from mixing knowledge bases were also examined, with emphasis on the dialogue associated between tacit and explicit knowledge. Results indicated that tacit knowledge is widely used in decision making processes in various business organizations. Senior management teams were found to carry out interpretative activities that support analyses, intuition and a healthy exchange of ideas.

To explain why the depressive realism effect has been found in trivial, artificial laboratory but not in more realistic or emotionally engaging situations, the authors hypothesized that depressed people overcompensate for a tendency toward maladaptive experiential (intuitive) processing by exercising excessive rational control in trivial situations. In more consequential situations, they are unable to control their maladaptive experiential processing because it is excessive, or their rational control is insufficient, or both. As predicted, a subclinically depressed group (n = 39) made more optimal decisions than a nondepressed control group (n = 36) under trivial conditions, and the groups converged under more consequential conditions, with the depressed group responding less and the control group more optimally. Also, the depressed group reported engaging in less rational processing and in more maladaptive experiential processing in everyday life than did the control group.

A RISING FROM D. G. Rand, J. D. Greene & M. A. Nowak Nature 489, 427-430 (2012) Rand et al. (1) reported increased cooperation in social dilemmas after forcing individuals [...]

A study was conducted to evaluate persons' purported ability to detect hidden observers. Anecdotally, most people (87%) report that covert observation can be detected. A total of 140 college students individually sat in a room with a two-way mirror and video-monitor camera. They were told that they might be observed for any or all of the subsequent 5 min. Participants noted whether they felt a hidden observer watched them during each minute of the 5-min. session. After the session, students reported if a possible hidden observer watched via a two-way mirror or video camera or if they were not watched. Students were unable to detect observation beyond chance. Possible reasons for the persistence of the belief in detection of covert observation are posited as impetus for further research.

This study was designed to examine differences in responses to the six rational/intuitive scales of the Personal Style Inventory in relation to gender, age, ethnic group, birth country, occupation, and industry. Data were collected from 495 participants in training programs in Australia, England, New Zealand, and the United States. Multivariate analysis of variance indicated no differences among groups on the six scales which then are not sensitive to the characteristics so separate norming scores are not indicated. Lack of differences between sexes contrasts with the finding that women score more intuitive than men on other style assessment tools. Findings are not, however, consistent. And, since characteristics other than gender may show similar disparate results, further study of rational-intuitive commensurability is needed.

If 'randomlike' behavior can be learned in a laboratory setting, a question is the extent to which men and women can profit from systematic feedback in successfully predicting random events. Undergraduate volunteers (34 men and 78 women) were asked to predict the identity of computer-random numbers arranged in sets of 25 digits (1 to 5) and displayed individually on a Televideo computer terminal. Men and women (between-subjects) were instructed to predict 4 sets of 25 random digits, and all subjects were given immediate feedback of the correct target for 2 of the four sets (within-subjects) in a counterbalanced design. Chi-squared tests of the distribution of predictions showed significant gender dependencies. Also, the distribution of predictions was significantly dependent upon whether the subjects received feedback after making a prediction. Implications for 'psi' research and 'chaos' theory are discussed.

In unstructured interactions, male friends were found to be more accurate than male strangers in inferring each other's thoughts and feelings. Plausible reasons for this difference were that friends (a) interacted more and exchanged more information, (b) had more similar personalities and therefore more rapport with each other, and (c) had more detailed knowledge of each other's lives. Data confirmed that the friends did indeed interact more and were more similar in their sociability than the strangers; however, these differences did not account for the friends' greater empathic accuracy. Instead, this was primarily attributable to a difference in knowledge structures, namely, the friends' ability to accurately read their partners' thoughts and feelings about imagined events in another place or time.

Although it has become commonplace to view Piaget's theory as underestimating the competence of young children, his studies clearly highlight two qualitative advances during the preoperational period. Foremost is the breakthrough of representational intelligence, beginning around 2 years. Second is the emergence of coordinated representational thought, beginning around age 4 1/2. This second period from 4 through 6 years, which Piaget calls the 'intuitive substage', is the focus of this article. After summarizing the description of intuitive thought found in the classical Genevan studies of the 1940s and 1950s, I focus on the more detailed analyses provided in three more recent sources: (a) the research on the psychology of functions elaborating the logical structure of intuitive thought; (b) the studies of possibility and necessity describing the emergence of logical modalities during the intuitive period, and (c) the research on the logic of meaning, describing the abstraction of symbolic meanings during this period. These Genevan accounts of the age 4 transition are consistent with current research and theory in such areas as children's theories of mind, understanding of certainty and probability, and understanding of appearance and reality.

Two experiments examined how TV news viewers divide attention between the audio and video messages of news stories. The experiment tested the 'belongingness' hypothesis which asserts that two distinct perceptual stimuli will be attended to as if they were a single stimulus when they appear to belong together. The experiments extended the belongingness hypothesis by manipulating semantic units (i.e., audio and video messages) rather than perceptual units. Auditory-visual redundancy was used to manipulate the belongingness variable. It was hypothesized that dissonant audio and video would be viewed as conveying two different messages, with the result that attentional capacity would be exceeded. Conversely, redundant stories would be viewed as conveying one message, with the results that attentional capacity would not be exceeded. Using secondary task methodology--reaction time tasks in Experiment 1 and memory preloads in Experiment 2--the belongingness hypothesis was supported.

Subjects named pictures while hearing distractor words that shared word-initial or word-final segments with the picture names or were unrelated to the picture names. The relative timing of distractor and picture presentation was varied. Compared with unrelated distractors, both types of related distractors facilitated picture naming under certain timing conditions. Begin-related distractors facilitated the naming responses if the shared segments began 150 ms before, at, or 150 ms after picture onset. By contrast, end-related distractors only facilitated the responses if the shared segments began at or 150 ms after picture onset. The results suggest that the phonological encoding of the beginning of a word is initiated before the encoding of its end.

Foresight has ubiquitous uses in everyday life. But its implementation at the social level presents difficulties which have not yet been fully resolved. This article considers the nature of foresight as a human capacity, some barriers to its use and contexts where implementation is being attempted. It is concluded that foresight activities are basically driven by structural imperatives. They imply a continued growth of foresight work despite the considerable difficulties involved. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Most recent work concerned with intuition has emphasized the errors of intuitive judgment in the context of justification. The present research instead views intuition as informed judgment in the context of discovery. Two word tasks and a gestalt closure task were developed to investigate this concept of intuition. Two of these tasks demonstrated that people could respond discriminatively to coherence that they could not identify, and a third task demonstrated that this tacit perception of coherence guided people gradually to an explicit representation of it in the form of a hunch or hypothesis. While such hunches may surface quite suddenly into consciousness, we propose that the underlying cognitive processes which produce them are more continous than discontinuous in nature. Specifically, we argue that clues to coherence automatically activate the problem solver's relevant mnemonic and semantic networks. Eventually the level of patterned activation is sufficient to cross a threshold of consciousness, and at that point, it is represented as a hunch or hypothesis. The largely unconscious processes involved in generating hunches is quite different from the conscious processes required to test them--thereby vindicating the classical distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification.