A rational reinterpretation of dual-process theories

S. Milli, F. Lieder, & T. L. Griffiths

Cognition

Volume 217, December 2021, 104881

Abstract

Highly influential “dual-process” accounts of human cognition postulate the coexistence of a slow accurate system with a fast error-prone system. But why would there be just two systems rather than, say, one or 93? Here, we argue that a dual-process architecture might reflect a rational tradeoff between the cognitive flexibility afforded by multiple systems and the time and effort required to choose between them. We investigate what the optimal set and number of cognitive systems would be depending on the structure of the environment. We find that the optimal number of systems depends on the variability of the environment and the difficulty of deciding when which system should be used. Furthermore, we find that there is a plausible range of conditions under which it is optimal to be equipped with a fast system that performs no deliberation (“System 1”) and a slow system that achieves a higher expected accuracy through deliberation (“System 2”). Our findings thereby suggest a rational reinterpretation of dual-process theories.

From the General Discussion

While we have formulated the function of selecting between multiple cognitive systems as metareasoning, this does not mean that the mechanisms through which this function is realized have to involve any form

of reasoning. Rather, our analysis holds for all selection and arbitration mechanisms as having more cognitive systems incurs a higher cognitive cost. This also applies to model-free mechanisms that choose decision systems based on learned associations. This is because the more actions there are, the longer it takes for model-free reinforcement learning to converge to a good solution and the suboptimal choices during the learning phase can be costly.

The emerging connection between normative modeling and dual-process theories is remarkable because the findings from these approaches are often invoked to support opposite views on human (ir)rationality (Stanovich, 2011). In this debate, some authors (Ariely, 2009; Marcus, 2009) have interpreted the existence of a fast, error-prone cognitive system whose heuristics violate the rules of logic, probability theory, and expected utility theory as a sign of human irrationality.  By contrast, our analysis suggests that having a fast but fallible cognitive system in addition to a slow but accurate system might be the best

possible solution. This implies that the variability, fallibility, and inconsistency of human judgment that result from people’s switching between System 1 and System 2 should not be interpreted as evidence

for human irrationality, because it might reflect the rational use of limited cognitive resources. 

A pdf is here.

Lazy, Not Biased: Susceptibility to Partisan Fake News Is Better Explained by Lack of Reasoning Than by Motivated Reasoning

Pennycook, G. & Rand, D. G.

Cognition. (2019)

Volume 188, July 2019, Pages 39-50

Abstract

Why do people believe blatantly inaccurate news headlines (“fake news”)? Do we use our reasoning abilities to convince ourselves that statements that align with our ideology are true, or does reasoning allow us to effectively differentiate fake from real regardless of political ideology? Here we test these competing accounts in two studies (total N = 3,446 Mechanical Turk workers) by using the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) as a measure of the propensity to engage in analytical reasoning. We find that CRT performance is negatively correlated with the perceived accuracy of fake news, and positively correlated with the ability to discern fake news from real news – even for headlines that align with individuals’ political ideology. Moreover, overall discernment was actually better for ideologically aligned headlines than for misaligned headlines. Finally, a headline-level analysis finds that CRT is negatively correlated with perceived accuracy of relatively implausible (primarily fake) headlines, and positively correlated with perceived accuracy of relatively plausible (primarily real) headlines. In contrast, the correlation between CRT and perceived accuracy is unrelated to how closely the headline aligns with the participant’s ideology. Thus, we conclude that analytic thinking is used to assess the plausibility of headlines, regardless of whether the stories are consistent or inconsistent with one’s political ideology. Our findings therefore suggest that susceptibility to fake news is driven more by lazy thinking than it is by partisan bias per se – a finding that opens potential avenues for fighting fake news.

Highlights

• Participants rated perceived accuracy of fake and real news headlines.

• Analytic thinking was associated with ability to discern between fake and real.

• We found no evidence that analytic thinking exacerbates motivated reasoning.

• Falling for fake news is more a result of a lack of thinking than partisanship.

The research is here.

On Dual- and Single-Process Models of Thinking

De Neys W. On 

Perspectives on Psychological Science. 

February 2021. 

doi:10.1177/1745691620964172

Abstract

Popular dual-process models of thinking have long conceived intuition and deliberation as two qualitatively different processes. Single-process-model proponents claim that the difference is a matter of degree and not of kind. Psychologists have been debating the dual-process/single-process question for at least 30 years. In the present article, I argue that it is time to leave the debate behind. I present a critical evaluation of the key arguments and critiques and show that—contra both dual- and single-model proponents—there is currently no good evidence that allows one to decide the debate. Moreover, I clarify that even if the debate were to be solved, it would be irrelevant for psychologists because it does not advance the understanding of the processing mechanisms underlying human thinking.

Time to Move On

The dual vs single process model debate has not been resolved, it can be questioned whether the debate

can be resolved, and even if it were to be resolved, it will not inform our theory development about the critical processing mechanism underlying human thinking. This implies that the debate is irrelevant for the empirical study of thinking. In a sense the choice between a single and dual process model boils—quite literally—down to a choice between two different religions. Scholars can (and may) have different personal beliefs and preferences as to which model serves their conceptualizing and communicative goals best. However, what they cannot do is claim there are good empirical or theoretical scientific arguments to favor one over the other.

I do not contest that the single vs dual process model debate might have been useful in the past. For example, the relentless critique of single process proponents helped to discard the erroneous perfect feature alignment view. Likewise, the work of Evans and Stanovich in trying to pinpoint defining features was helpful to start sketching the descriptive building blocks of the mental simulation and cognitive decoupling process. Hence, I do believe that the debate has had some positive by-products. 

A pdf is here.

The Cognitive Science of Fake News

Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. 

(2020, November 18). 

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ar96c

Abstract

We synthesize a burgeoning literature investigating why people believe and share “fake news” and other misinformation online. Surprisingly, the evidence contradicts a common narrative whereby partisanship and politically motivated reasoning explain failures to discern truth from falsehood. Instead, poor truth discernment is linked to a lack of careful reasoning and relevant knowledge, and to the use of familiarity and other heuristics. Furthermore, there is a substantial disconnect between what people believe and what they will share on social media. This dissociation is largely driven by inattention, rather than purposeful sharing of misinformation. As a result, effective interventions can nudge social media users to think about accuracy, and can leverage crowdsourced veracity ratings to improve social media ranking algorithms.

From the Discussion

Indeed, recent research shows that a simple accuracy nudge intervention –specifically, having participants rate the accuracy of a single politically neutral headline (ostensibly as part of a pretest) prior to making judgments about social media sharing –improves the extent to which people discern between true and false news content when deciding what to share online in survey experiments. This approach has also been successfully deployed in a large-scale field experiment on Twitter, in which messages asking users to rate the accuracy of a random headline were sent to thousands of accounts who recently shared links to misinformation sites. This subtle nudge significantly increased the quality of the content they subsequently shared; see Figure3B. Furthermore, survey experiments have shown that asking participants to explain how they know if a headline is true of false before sharing it increases sharing discernment, and having participants rate accuracy at the time of encoding protects against familiarity effects."

(How) Do You Regret Killing One to Save Five? Affective and Cognitive Regret Differ After Utilitarian and Deontological Decisions

Goldstein-Greenwood J, et al.

Personality and Social Psychology 

Bulletin. 2020;46(9):1303-1317. 

doi:10.1177/0146167219897662

Abstract

Sacrificial moral dilemmas, in which opting to kill one person will save multiple others, are definitionally suboptimal: Someone dies either way. Decision-makers, then, may experience regret about these decisions. Past research distinguishes affective regret, negative feelings about a decision, from cognitive regret, thoughts about how a decision might have gone differently. Classic dual-process models of moral judgment suggest that affective processing drives characteristically deontological decisions to reject outcome-maximizing harm, whereas cognitive deliberation drives characteristically utilitarian decisions to endorse outcome-maximizing harm. Consistent with this model, we found that people who made or imagined making sacrificial utilitarian judgments reliably expressed relatively more affective regret and sometimes expressed relatively less cognitive regret than those who made or imagined making deontological dilemma judgments. In other words, people who endorsed causing harm to save lives generally felt more distressed about their decision, yet less inclined to change it, than people who rejected outcome-maximizing harm.

General Discussion

Across four studies, we found that different sacrificial moral dilemma decisions elicit different degrees of affective and cognitive regret. We found robust evidence that utilitarian decision-makers who accept outcome-maximizing harm experience far more affective regret than their deontological decision-making counterparts who reject outcome-maximizing harm, and we found somewhat weaker evidence that utilitarian decision-makers experience less cognitive regret than deontological decision-makers.The significant interaction between dilemma decision and regret type predicted in H1 emerged both when participants freely endorsed dilemma decisions (Studies 1, 3, and 4) and were randomly assigned to imagine making a decision (Study 2). Hence, the present findings cannot simply be attributed to chronic differences in the types of regret that people who prioritize each decision experience. Moreover, we found tentative evidence for H2: Focusing on the counterfactual world in which they made the alternative decision attenuated utilitarian decision-makers’ heightened affective regret compared with factual reflection, and reduced differences in affective regret between utilitarian and deontological decision-makers (Study 4). Furthermore, our findings do not appear attributable to impression management concerns, as there were no differences between public and private reports of regret.

A pdf of the research is here.