FEELING WE'RE WRONG: INTUITIVE BIAS DETECTION DURING DECISION-MAKING

Human thinking is often biased by heuristic intuitions. Popular theories have argued that people overrely on intuitive thinking and fail to engage in more demanding logical reasoning. However, the nature of the intuitive bias and logical thinking failure are poorly understood. It is not clear whether the bias results from a failure to detect that the heuristic intuitions conflict with more logical considerations or from a failure to discard and inhibit these tempting heuristics. The exact locus of the intuitive bias has far-stretching consequences for the debate on human rationality. If people were at least to detect the conflict, this would imply that they are no mere illogical thinkers but are aware that their response is not fully warranted. Specifying the exact bias locus is also paramount for the development of more effective intervention programs to prevent biased thinking. However, the field lacks clear data to settle this debate. In my research I am addressing this fundamental problem with an interdisciplinary approach that combines reasoning research with insights from the memory and cognitive control field. By relying on a combination of experimental, developmental, and neuroscientific methods I managed to start characterizing the conflict detection and inhibition mechanisms during thinking. This unique multi-faceted approach has demonstrated that conflict detection during thinking is remarkably flawless. Although people fail to inhibit tempting heuristics, they at least implicitly detect that their answer is not warranted. This implies that people are far more logical than the widespread bias suggests and provides new insights on the alleged human irrationality.