ABSTRACT. People often avoid information in order to stay blissfully ignorant, even in helping situations where people are truly in need. The present research explores whether decision makers choose to pursue information about needy others, and whether pursuing the information is related to their willingness to help the needy. Because abstaining from helping the needy may diminish one’s moral self- image, we expected selfish decision makers to avoid information regarding the needy targets. Two studies with hypothetical scenarios, and one with an incentivized operationalization (N=1273) support this hypothesis. We further maintain that people who consider themselves entitled are less worried about damaging their self-image by making selfish choices. This, in turn lessens their need to avoid the information concerning the deprived target. By contrast, people who do not believe they are more entitled than others yet are reluctant to help those in need would prefer to avoid information that might create a conflict between their self-interest and their beliefs. Hence we hypothesized and found that decision makers who seek information about the needy have on average a higher sense of entitlement than those who deliberately avoid this information.

ABSTRACT. The framing effect is a widely acknowledged phenomenon, wherein logically equivalent options (e.g., 90% chance of winning vs. 10% chance of losing) trigger different preferences. The Information Leakage account suggests that choice of frame ‘leaks’ information to decision-makers, making the frames informationally non-equivalent. For example, decision-makers might interpret a positive frame (e.g., 90% chance of winning) as an implicit recommendation. In a series of 6 preregistered experiments (total N = 1211), we eliminated the informativeness of frames by reducing the perceived freedom of a speaker to choose a frame (the Choice Limitation manipulation) and varying the communication context between the speaker (i.e., the choice architect) and the listener (i.e., the decision-maker) from collaborative to competitive (the Interest Alignment manipulation). Our aim was to investigate whether individuals exhibit sensitivity to the informational relevance of a frame. If such sensitivity exists, we hypothesized a diminished framing effect in scenarios where the leaked information conveys no useful or trustworthy cues. While the Choice Limitation manipulation occasionally attenuated the framing effect, particularly in within-subject designs, the Interest Alignment manipulation consistently led to a reduction in the framing effect in both within-subject and between-subject designs. The findings of these experiments provide partial support for individuals’ adaptability and sensitivity to the informational value of frames.

ABSTRACT. Misinformation is an increasing threat to society, affecting the political domain and undermining democratic processes. Studies in support of the Continued Influence Effect (CIE) suggest that, due to a biased process, people tend to rely on misinformation even after its retraction. This paper uses Guillory and Geraci’s (2013) study design to re-examine the CIE, adding further controls to the original study as well as quantitative scales to complement the qualitative questions already present. The study is based on a political scenario of bribery and evaluates the extent to which participants rely on critical information even after it has been retracted. In line with the original study, we show that retractions from sources higher in trustworthiness and expertise correlate with lower reliance on the original misinformation and that belief in the retraction translates into voting behaviour. However, we also show that the CIE is not necessarily the result of a bias, but that effective retractions can occur if participants perceive the retracting source to be reliable, bringing their beliefs back to baseline. These results are in line with rational re-interpretations of alleged biases in reasoning and contribute to initiatives aimed at alleviating the harms of misinformation.

ABSTRACT. In recent studies, an association has emerged between conspiracy beliefs and cognitive biases. This paper delves into two distinct biases: the intentionality bias, involving the tendency to attribute agency and intentionality to random events, and the proportionality bias, which links significant events to proportionally significant causes. We investigate these biases through a communication game designed to mimic the social dilemma that fuels conspiracy ideation. In our experiment, Receivers must interpret messages, speculating on their origin – whether randomly generated by a computer or sent by human Senders with concealed motives. Receivers make guesses about the content of an urn and the actual author, with different stakes (high vs. low). Our findings, however, do not support the hypothesis that proportionality bias is related to conspiracism, although we found a significant negative association between intentionality bias and generic conspiracy beliefs. We also uncover intriguing insights into Senders’ behavior, revealing that they anticipate more deception in others when they themselves engage in deception and expect higher trust from Receivers when scoring higher on conspiracism scales.

ABSTRACT. We study popularity-based social influence in settings in which people choose how to behave after observing the behaviors of members of a reference group. We depart from prior research by focusing on settings in which some group members are observed more frequently than others. In these settings, the behavior of the majority of group members can differ from the more frequent behavior, which we call the majority of behaviors. Will choices be more strongly influenced by the behavior of the majority, or the majority of behaviors? In three studies (N = 2,110), we find that choices are better predicted by the majority of behaviors than by the behavior of the majority - even when following the behavior of the majority is normatively warranted. Analyses of mechanisms suggest that most participants intend to follow the behavior of the majority, but end up following the majority of behaviors because their memory is biased towards the majority of behaviors. Our findings cast new light on how social influence operates in groups and on phenomena like the spread of misinformation or pluralistic ignorance in contexts such as social media.

ABSTRACT. Debunking arguments attempt to undermine beliefs by attacking their justification on theoretical or empirical grounds. A prominent case is the debunking of moral beliefs, such as Joshua Greene’s exposure of deontological norms as post-hoc rationalizations on the basis of neuroscientific, psychological, and behavioral evidence. In this paper, we assess debunking arguments of this kind from a philosophy of science perspective, using Greene’s contributions as case studies. First, we propose to reconstruct moral arguments as instances of practical reasoning in the form: “X is good. Doing Y is a means to make X happen. Then, (I should) do Y.” Second, we argue that debunking strategies against these arguments amount to diagnoses of irrationality. Third, we study how and when such diagnoses of irrationality are sound. To be so, at least three assumptions must hold: i) that the relevant moral norm is correctly applied to the scenario to adequately sustain the premise “X is good”; ii) that both experimenter and participants share the relevant premises; iii) that the experimenter correctly interprets participants’ responses. Our analysis allows both for a rational reconstruction of the debate and for a clear assessment of the prospects and limitations of debunking arguments concerning morality.

ABSTRACT. Opposition is implied in various types of reasoning processes, probably more than we imagine (for a review see Branchini et al. 2021). It is spontaneously used in everyday situations to suggest alternatives to reality by both children (e.g., Fitzgibbon et al. 2019) and adults (e.g. Byrne 2016, 2018). This presentation offers an overview of the theoretical and empirical reasons supporting the hypothesis that “thinking in opposites” might represent a simple and effective prompt to overcome fixedness in various kinds of inductive reasoning tasks. In the first part of the presentation, we will revise evidence from studies testing the hypothesis in visuo-spatial insight problem solving (Bianchi et al., 2020; Branchini et al 2015). The second part focuses on a new study conducted with 180 Italian adult participants which investigated the effects of this prompt on Wason’s rule discovery task. The study was designed to resolve questions left open from a previous investigation by Branchini et al. (2023). Reflections on the potential and limitations of the project will occupy the conclusion and we will also discuss the results of a pilot study (in progress) which extends the hypothesis to an open-solution creativity task.

ABSTRACT. Solving CRA problems involves both automatic spreading of activation and deliberate generation and testing of hypotheses (Smith et al., 2012). However, the interaction between these two processes is under-researched. Our study aimed to investigate how the act of solving problems and generating hypotheses from different words affect the patterns of spreading activation. We presented participants with modified CRA problems, where one word was always ambiguous, followed by several related or unrelated words. The position of an ambiguous word was manipulated. One group of participants was told to solve problems, while the other group just read the presented words. Participants were asked to rate the semantic closeness of these words to the CRA problem (Experiment 1) or categorise words as abstract or specific (Experiment 2). The results showed that when participants were trying to solve the problems, the activation of all related words was lower compared to when they were not solving problems. The position of the ambiguous word also had an effect on the level of related words. These findings provide insight into how deliberate processes in CRA problem-solving shape and alter the patterns of spreading activation.

ABSTRACT. We investigated spontaneous offloading in a study requiring participants to plan the shortest route to connect locations on maps under order constraints. We manipulated map difficulty (low/high) and the possibility to offload cognition into the world by allowing/disallowing the free use of a pen on the map during planning (offloading/non-offloading). Participants used more offloading strategies (e.g., marking points to be visited) in the high (vs. low) difficulty maps and showed a better performance in the offloading (vs. non-offloading) condition in the high-difficulty maps only. Cognition was offloaded also in the low-difficulty maps, especially when high-difficulty maps were solved first. In a second study, we also investigated offloading onto the body and transfer effects. We examined how training with offloading into the world (free pen use), onto the body (free hands but no pen), or without offloading (blocked hands) affected performance in the test stage, in which pen use was disabled/enabled. We observed an asymmetric transfer effect: the decrease in performance when pen use was disabled was greater than the improvement in performance when it was enabled. Additionally, participants overstated offloading effectiveness in their metacognitive evaluations. The implications of the results for research on offloading and planning will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. The presentation offers insights into scientists' thinking, judgments, reflections on norms, and decisions concerning pre-registering hypotheses, design, standard and exploratory aspects of experimenting, and analysis methods. It will focus on how collaborative practices and processes intrinsic to research have changed as an answer to the replication crisis from more than 10 years ago. Knowledge-building processes, understood as concurrently social and cognitive, are situated between three aims: When generating reliable results and effectively communicating them, researchers want to deliver meaningful contributions, maintain accountability, and attain recognition, for their academic viability. The change of practice not only mitigates publication bias but also influences how knowledge is perceived, and how it should be made available to whom and where. The study participants for this qualitative expert-interview study are experimental scientists from social and cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and others in JDM. I use cognitive ethnography to study social epistemological processes in collaborative practice. The naturalistic approach of the empirically informed philosophy of science project JUKNOW (The role of scientific judgment in generating knowledge) follows the understanding of being continuous with science by using science as a resource and conducting empirical investigation for a better understanding of social epistemological implications of scientists' practices.

ABSTRACT. Human judgments and decisions are often influenced by reference points or “anchors”, even when the latter are completely irrelevant. This “anchoring effect” has also been documented in judicial decision-making but remains under-researched for non-judges. This study aims to bridge this gap by examining the susceptibility of attorneys to anchoring biases in legal evaluations. We ran two online experimental studies, targeting a stratified sample of the general population (N = 438) and a sample of attorneys (N = 296). After reading hypothetical legal cases involving felonies, subjects were asked to assess the reimbursement each case might be awarded. The treatment consisted of two different kinds of anchors: relevant (client’s reimbursement expectation) and irrelevant (population of the city where the client works), appearing as high or low numbers, for a total of four between-subjects conditions. Our findings indicate that attorneys, akin to laypeople, are significantly influenced by anchoring. Both populations demonstrated significantly different compensation claims based on the presented anchor (high or low). The effect was also observed for irrelevant anchors, suggesting a pervasive influence on legal decision-making. These results underscore the need for increased awareness and training among legal professionals to mitigate the influence of cognitive biases, particularly in high-stakes legal judgments.

ABSTRACT. Intuitively, two equivalent phrasings of the same decision problem should evoke the same responses. Ever since the discovery of framing effects (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981), we know that this is often not the case. A large literature on goal-framing sought to exploit this phenomenon to encourage healthy behaviours such as vaccination, illness testing, or lifestyle changes. Will a health campaign be more convincing if it emphasises the benefits of compliance (e.g., ‘If you exercise regularly, you will be healthier’ – a positive frame) or the disadvantages of non-compliance (e.g., ‘If you do not exercise, you will not be healthier’ – a negative frame)? As several decades of research have not produced a conclusive answer, calls have arisen for new theoretical frameworks (van’t Riet et al., 2016). Drawing from the literature on reasoning with conditionals (Cummins, 1991), the linguistic vehicle of goal frames, we argue for a new approach. We present an empirical study on the effects of disablers and alternative causes on participants’ response to frames advocating prevention behaviours. Replicating earlier work with detection, we predict and find that positive frames are more affected by disablers to the advocated behaviour and negative frames are more affected by alternatives to it.

Cummins, Denise D., Lubart, T., Alksnis, O., & Rist, R. (1991). Conditional reasoning and causation. Memory & Cognition, 19(3), 274–282.

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453–458.

van’t Riet, J., Cox, A. D., Cox, D., Zimet, G. D., Bruijn, G.-J. D., Putte, B. V. den, Vries, H. D., Werrij, M. Q., & Ruiter, R. A. C. (2016). Does perceived risk influence the effects of message framing? Revisiting the link between prospect theory and message framing. Health Psychology Review, 10(4), 447–459.

ABSTRACT. We experimentally evaluate the impact of two boosting interventions, namely media literacy tips and inoculation, on COVID-19 fake news discernment and explore their potential spill-over effects on discernment of fake news about the Russo-Ukrainian war. In addition, we test the relative power of these interventions against cognitive (analytic thinking, scientific reasoning, intellectual humility, epistemic curiosity and bullshit receptivity) and belief predictors (conspiracy mentality, unfounded COVID-19 beliefs, pro-Kremlin conspiracy beliefs) of fake news discernment. We find that media literacy tips improve fake news discernment, albeit mostly only within their respective domain, while inoculation does not yield any significant effects. Individuals who are higher in analytic thinking, scientific reasoning, intellectual humility, and epistemic curiosity perform better in distinguishing fake news from real news in both studied domains. Conversely, those with higher conspiracy mentality, more unfounded COVID-19 beliefs, and pro-Kremlin conspiracy beliefs are worse at discerning fake news from real news. Importantly, already held beliefs predict fake news discernment much better than dispositional characteristics and cognitive styles.

ABSTRACT. The foreign-language effect has been found in many psychological processes. For moral problems, the effect reflects a tendency to make more utilitarian (rational) decisions in a foreign language than in one’s native language, at least for subjects with low self-reported reading proficiency. For reasoning tasks, the trend appears to reverse, with recent findings showing poorer logical evaluation of syllogisms when using a foreign language compared to one's native language. The purpose of this research is to investigate the foreign-language effect on further logical reasoning problems. Two groups of Spanish-speaking participants solved the same set of conditional problems in two different languages (foreign: English, or native: Spanish). Two well-known reasoning biases were examined: the negation of the antecedent and the affirmation of the consequent. We found that people were more accurate in their native language than in a foreign language, however there were no differences in biases between groups. These results are similar to those observed in research with syllogism problems. We will discuss this finding within the framework of dual-process theory (System 1, intuitive reasoning, and System 2, deliberative reasoning).

ABSTRACT. When certain health hazards are combined, they produce synergies. In other words, they lead to risks that are greater than the sum of risks presented by each factor separately. For instance, smoking and radon exposure interact synergistically to increase lung cancer risk. Without doubt, how people judge such risk combinations is important – and previous research showed mostly underestimation of synergistic risks. Our own research suggests that the likelihood of making a synergistic judgement may depend on the format of the task. We also found that people are better at judging certain synergistic risks as such than others. In the current pre-registered study, we aim to understand why this is the case. In particular, we experimentally test whether the likelihood of judging a combination of risk factors as synergistic depends on the outcome being immediate or delayed, binary or continuous, or whether knowledge about the outcome plays a role. We find that synergistic judgements are much more likely for immediate outcomes compared to the delayed ones. We also find that synergistic judgements are more likely if natural frequencies and partitive probabilities are used, as opposed to non-partitive (single-case) probabilities. These results have important implications for communications concerning synergistic risks.

ABSTRACT. There are long-standing disagreements about how to account for conjunctions of conditionals in natural language (Cantwell, 2022; Edgington, 1991; Lance, 1991; McGee, 1989; Sanfilippo et al., 2020), tied into different theories of the conditional itself. Of particular interest are conjunctions of the form "if A then C & if not-A then C". These can be used to "sum up" the logically valid inference of Dilemma: inferring C from a derivation of C from A and a derivation of C from not-A. Another function of this form is to convey that C is independent of A, making both "if A then C" and "if not-A then C" independence conditionals (Cruz & Over, 2023). Taken as psychological proposals, different accounts of "if A then C & if not-A then C" make divergent predictions for people's probability judgments about these conjunctions. We will compare formally derived predictions with empirical data in two studies to assess the descriptive adequacy and potential shortcomings of these competing accounts. We will also ask whether the observed patterns of responses can be explained by means of basic psychological processes, such as probability matching.

ABSTRACT. Meta-Reasoning is a subdomain of metacognitive research, dealing with the monitoring and control processes accompanying reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. The symposium starts with an introduction to meta-reasoning. Then, it brings four empirical studies highlighting the potential of metacognitive judgments to inform us about the following reasoning processes: insight, conflict detection, inference from conditional statements, and multi-attribute choice. Clearly, metacognitive judgments are not perfect reflections of reasoning, as they are based on inferences that may not align with the core reasoning processes. Nevertheless, metacognitive judgments provide a window to examine reasoning processes, which facilitates the prediction of reasoning outcomes.

ABSTRACT. The main aim of the study was to examine the relationships between psychological well-being and belief in unfounded COVID-19 beliefs, specifically, whether powerlessness and distress (as indicators of psychological well-being) are causes or consequences of unfounded COVID-19 beliefs represented by conspiracy beliefs and pseudoscientific beliefs regarding treatment and measures. Unfounded beliefs were assessed using the COVID-19 Unfounded Beliefs Scale; distress was measured with the revised version of the Symptom Checklist-10, and powerlessness was measured with four items measuring the feeling of losing control. Data collection took place during three phases of the pandemic in Slovakia (October 2021, N = 1838; July 2022, N = 1420; April 2023, N = 925). Results suggest that individuals with stronger unfounded beliefs about COVID-19 reported greater feelings of powerlessness longitudinally, and individuals with stronger unfounded beliefs about COVID-19 treatment and measures reported greater distress longitudinally (notably, beliefs about COVID-19 measures in the first wave were associated with distress in the second wave, and beliefs about COVID-19 treatment in the second wave were associated with distress in the third wave). In general, the present findings corroborate previous research that conspiracy beliefs have long-term effects on well-being.

ABSTRACT. In the present study, we test two competing but mutually complementary hypotheses regarding the relationship between the endorsement of unfounded beliefs during COVID-19 pandemic (i.e. conspiracy and pseudoscientific beliefs) and institutional trust. To overcome correlational nature, we employed 3-wave longitudinal design to examine whether it is low institutional trust that predicts unfounded beliefs or it is the other way around. The final sample consists of 929 participants with full data sets from all three waves (49.80% women). We used the cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) which is well suited to examine the temporal directionality of the relationship between two variables. The results showed consistent pattern regarding trust in experts: effects of conspiracy and pseudoscientific beliefs predicting distrust in experts were stronger than the reverse pattern. For trust in government, the results showed support for both hypotheses. The study contributed to explaining possible causal relationship between unfounded beliefs and institutional trust i.e. conspiracy and pseudoscientific beliefs may have directly predicted decreased trust in experts and scientific institutions.

ABSTRACT. The surge of online fake news poses a significant threat to both society and democracy. While research in adults indicates that distinguishing between fake and real news requires analytic thinking, the media truth discernment during adolescence remains unexplored. Adolescents, due to unique cognitive characteristics, may be more susceptible to believe fake news, especially on social media. Building on a prior cross-sectional study, which demonstrated linear development in media truth discernment from middle school to adulthood, our present study aims to replicate these findings using an accelerated longitudinal design. Participants from various grades, spanning middle school to high school, were recruited to assess the perceived accuracy of real and fake news, alongside completing the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) measuring their ability to overcome reasoning biases. Adolescents underwent testing at three intervals, each 8 months apart. This study aims to reveal the developmental trajectory of media truth discernment from middle to high school and elucidate the role of analytical thinking in this process.

ABSTRACT. Decision-making abilities under value-based conditions, although they are to date poorly investigated, are pervasive in daily activities, as they occur whenever the decision-maker relies on the analysis of pros and cons for each alternative anticipating possible consequences. Considering that (i) as age increases there is a tendency to make riskier choices under value-based conditions and (ii) executive functions can support safe choices, the present study investigates the relationships between decision making under two value-based conditions (i.e., uncertainty and risk) and the core-abilities of executive functions (i.e., inhibition, working memory, and flexibility) in a sample of healthy older adults. Decision-making tasks and standardized neuropsychological tests were administered to 143 healthy older adults (30% males, age: 73.1 ± 6.91, education (years): 12.2 ± 4.32). The interconnection between variables was investigated through a network analysis model (estimation method: huge, regularization: EBICglasso). Results showed positive interconnections between the task assessing decision making under risk and executive functions, while the task investigating decision making under uncertainty presented a positive association only with flexibility. The study deepens the cognitive mechanisms underlying value-based decision making showing how the relationships with the considered cognitive abilities change according to the decisional condition.

ABSTRACT. Socially responsible investments (SRI) increased their popularity among investors over the last two decades. However, there is still a lack of knowledge on socially responsible investors’ characteristics and motivations behind the decision to invest in SRI. The present paper aims at filling this gap by profiling current and potential sustainable investors. Specifically, data from a representative sample of Italian consumers was used to perform a Latent Profile Analysis and identify various sub-groups within the respondents. Findings brought out five profiles of consumers, each one differently associated with the likelihood of investing in socially responsible products. The profile that best describes sustainable investors is characterized by high levels of both financial and non-financial determinants of investment decision-making. These findings suggest that non-financial aspects, namely psychological characteristics such as attitudes and personal values, play a key role in the decision to invest responsibly.

ABSTRACT. In the present study we examine intuitive theories about the structure of knowledge. We hypothesized that naïve theories about knowledge might be manifested by people relying on physical properties of objects rather than knowledge properties when evaluating knowledge. Our experimental design was to have participants test knowledge claims that were consistent or inconsistent with naive realism (Nudds, 2009). We varied the type of task: size (Knowledge about an elephant is more complex than knowledge about a fly) and complexity (Knowledge about a book is more complex than knowledge about a laptop computer). Additionally, we varied time constraints. Reaction time and accuracy of checks were recorded. In general, reaction times were found to increase when checking counterintuitive statements. At the task level, subjects spent more time checking intuitive types of statements task size, but there was no analogical effect for counterintuitive statements. Verification accuracy varied by statements type. Subjects checked counterintuitive types of statements more accurately than intuitive types, but task-level performance decreased only for intuitive types of statements in the size task. Time pressure had no effect on accuracy at the task-specific level. Partial confirmation of expectations about how people evaluate knowledge complexity was obtained.

ABSTRACT. Knowledge affects how humans think and reason: people use background knowledge to interpret natural language, and reason over those interpretations. We show one way in which offline knowledge, which is stored in semantic memory, interacts with online knowledge, that is, knowledge acquired through the use of factive mental state verbs such as know and discover. The interaction tests a theory of human thinking that assumes people construct simulations of possibilities – mental models – when they reason. It predicts that offline knowledge can affect reasoning through a process known as modulation, which blocks the mental construction of possibilities; and that online knowledge can cause reasoners to make presuppositions about facts. It also describes the mechanisms by which the mind updates mental models and separates fact from belief. An experiment tested the theory and corroborated its predicted interaction effect. We discuss the results in light of recent proposals of reasoning with knowledge.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates how people interpret information from AI by exploring a recent finding in people’s interpretation of verbal probability phrases. Mislavsky & Gaertig (2023) demonstrate that people are more likely to treat verbal probabilities as “countable” than numeric probabilities. For example, when two experts consistently label an event as “likely,” people perceive it as “very likely.” However, when two experts consistently state “70%,” people perceive the probability as exactly “70%.” How do people interpret the phrase “likely” when two AIs consistently use it? Studies on algorithm aversion (Dietvorst et al., 2015) suggest people treat information from algorithms differently than from human experts. Thus, there is a possibility that people perceive uncertainty differently from verbal probability expressions between experts and AI. To examine this, the present study required participants to estimate uncertainty about rising stock prices when two experts or AIs consistently provided the same verbal probability phrase (“likely”) or numeric probability (“70%”). Results indicated no difference between the conditions involving human experts and those applying AI.

ABSTRACT. The zero-sum fallacy (Pilditch, Fenton, and Lagnado, 2019) – where people incorrectly dismiss evidence that is equally predicted by competing but non-exhaustive hypotheses – has profound implications across domains such as medicine and law. Our present research further investigates the fallacy in the context of quantitative belief updating. We manipulate the priors of the competing hypotheses and the conditional probabilities of the evidence, assessing how this impacts people’s posterior probabilities for both hypotheses. Additionally, we examine the effects of drawing and viewing visual representations of the causal structure underlying the scenarios (in the form of causal graphs) to develop interventions that address this reasoning error. Our findings reveal a robust zero-sum effect when varying both conditional and prior probabilities of alternative hypotheses explaining a common effect. Participants consistently preferred a simple explanation, discounting alternative hypotheses and disregarding multiply-explained evidence. We extend the zero-sum reasoning effect to probability estimates, where participants hesitate to attribute probabilities exceeding 50% to the competing hypotheses, reflecting an exclusivity assumption. Drawing or viewing causal models did not mitigate the presence of zero-sum thinking, highlighting the complexity of addressing this fallacy.

ABSTRACT. Anderson (1990) offers a model of choice of a solution strategy: PG-C, where P is the probability of achieving a goal, G is the value of that goal, C is the effort required to achieve the goal. Payne and Duggan (2011) conclude: person should give up when value of PG-C approaches zero. They showed that the decision to give up is influenced by prior probability of solvability and of problem-size. Based on the findings of Payne and Duggan, we suggest that metacognitive assessments may act as markers of giving up problem solving.

29 participants were presented with unsolvable version of the checkerboard problem (Bilalić et al., 2019). We manipulated problem-size and announced 25 of 75% probability of solvability. The participants reported their emotional state and confidence in solving the problem with half a minute interval.

The assessments of confidence decrease in all conditions. Announced probability of solvability affects the subjective assessment of the emotional state of participant: for more likely solvable problems, a conflict arises between the expected and real possibility of solving the problem, as a result the emotional state appears to be more negative than for more likely unsolvable problems, where the expected and real possibilities of solving coincide.

ABSTRACT. Anecdotal and experimental evidence shows that certain psychedelic substances can enhance creativity: they are known to promote hyper-assocaitive thinking and foster insight. Nevertheless, the risk of dangerous effects, their legal status, and the social stigma related to their use make it problematic to experiment with psychedelics. Virtual Reality might circumvent these issues: the fledgling field of research on technodelic experiences -i.e., immersive experiences aimed at inducing altered states of consciousness through solely digital means- yields promising results. Indeed, technodelic experiences are reportedly comparable to certain psychedelic experiences. Nevertheless, It is not clear whether such technodelic experiences can be as effective -e.g., for enhancing creative thinking- as psychedelics. Many technodelic experiences simulate the perceptual distortions that characterize psychedelic experiences, but doing so does not necessarily imply to also induce those altered states of consciousness that are thought to underlie the beneficial effects of psychedelics. We propose a different approach: our technodelic experience is based on the idea that non-ordinary states of consciousness can be triggered by sounds and repetitive vocalizations. Also, it puts the emphasis on the uniqueness of each experience by adapting to user's biofeedback.

ABSTRACT. The objective of reward or utility maximization pervades the fields of reinforcement learning, economics and psychology. However, not all behaviors seem to be explainable in terms of reward maximization. Curiosity and creativity, in the form of information and novelty seeking, seems to drive a major deal of behavior. But how can reward-free, intrinsically motivated behavior be formalized? Here we compare the merits of two popular reward-free approaches, known as empowerment (MPOW) and free energy principle (FEP), and a recently developed one, called maximum occupancy principle (MOP) (1,2). All formalisms are defined in terms of several forms of entropy maximization, but they differ in important aspects. Qualitatively, MPOW looks for states where agents have more control over the consequences of their actions, FEP favors policies that move the agent close to desired, homeostatic states. MOP favors visiting novel states and looks for regions of large action and state availability. We find that only MOP generates lively, dynamic, and energetic behaviors, while MPOW tend to cease behavior once reaching unstable fixed points of the dynamics, and FEP collapses to a deterministic policy in fully observable environments. We empirically show in a balancing cartpole and a grid world that both MPOW and FEP agents stick to a trivial set of behavioral repertoires, while MOP agents generate short of exploratory and dancing-like motions.

(1) Ramírez-Ruiz, J., Grytskyy, D., & Moreno-Bote, R. (2022). Seeking entropy: complex behavior from intrinsic motivation to occupy action-state path space. arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.10316. (2) Moreno-Bote, R., & Ramirez-Ruiz, J. (2023, November). Empowerment, Free Energy Principle and Maximum Occupancy Principle Compared. In NeurIPS 2023 workshop: Information-Theoretic Principles in Cognitive Systems.

ABSTRACT. Whilst extensive research has been conducted in regards to gain vs loss message framing effects in persuasive messaging, we aimed to explore whether there is an interaction between message framing, point of reference and individual differences. Through recruiting a sample of undergraduate students from the University of Leicester, this study aims to investigate consumer purchase intentions of an eco-friendly washing machine, after being exposed to one of the following advertising conditions: self-gain, other-gain, self-loss or other-loss. Furthermore, the experiment will measure the participants’ perception of their own personality traits, pre-existing environmental concerns and egoism. By understanding the forms of advertising that encourage the viewer to react more favourably, environmental conservation can be furthered. This and other implications for the future will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. We observe causal relationships naturally and quickly in events that we experience in our daily life. The current research investigates if causal events such as collisions will attract our attention and make us notice other changes that might occur to these colliding objects. Participants were asked to report colour changes in two objects, one involved in a causal event (a collision) and the other independent of any collision. In line with our expectations, we observed that participants were more likely to report the colour change involved in the collision when the change happened at the same time as the collision. Against our predictions, however, we only observed a similar effect when colour changes happened before the collision, while the difference was less significant when the colour changes happened after the collision. We propose a possible explanation: the effect stems from participants anticipating causal events, leading them to pay extra attention to objects that might potentially be involved in a collision. This focused attention makes participants more likely to notice color changes during the anticipation period, which means people are actively devoting more cognitive resources anticipating and confirming causal interactions. This finding suggests that people prioritise causal observations in visual tasks.

ABSTRACT. The spread of online fake news is emerging as a major threat to human society and democracy. Despite the topic of misinformation being increasingly investigated over the past few years, most studies have been conducted on a WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) population without considering the developmental perspective, raising the question of the universality of previous findings. In our preregistered study, we recruited a representative population of four countries (France, India, UK, US) aged from 13 to 74 years old (N = 8730). Participants rated their perceived truthfulness and emotion when faced with online real and fake news, alongside completing the International Positive and Negative Affect Schedule Short Form (I-PANAS-SF), the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), and the Adolescent Conspiracy Belief Questionnaire (ABCQ). The goal of the present study was to investigate if these cognitive, emotional, and other socio-demographic mechanisms involved in online media truth discernment differs across cultures. Crucially, the innovation of our study lies in the expansive age range of the participants, spanning from early adolescence to late adulthood. This allows for a more comprehensive understanding of how media truth discernment varies across different stages of life.

ABSTRACT. We estimate what influences whether people seek out belief-inconsistent information. Past studies on information avoidance used contextual sources or simply asked participants to state what information they would seek in various contexts. However, the source of the information is likely to be problematic in the context of political information avoidance. To address this issue, our study uses ChatGPT as a neutral information source. We assessed self-reported knowledge, importance, and position on various controversial topics, including climate change, critical race theory, and abortion (N = 300). Next, we examined how often participants seek ChatGPT-generated information in favor of or opposed to each topic and whether information-seeking is related to their perceived knowledge of the topic, ratings of importance, and endorsement of or opposition to the topic. We correlated these outcomes with individual differences including intellectual humility and measures of analytic thinking (e.g., actively open-minded thinking, and cognitive reflection). Surprisingly, we found that people are just as likely to seek information about controversial topics whether the information is consistent or inconsistent with their views. There was negative interaction between importance and knowledge indicating that people were more likely to seek information perceived as important if they were knowledgeable about the topic.

ABSTRACT. Humans systematically make poor financial judgements, a problem that can be mitigated with financial advice, whether from humans or, increasingly, artificial intelligence (AI). Yet, one potential obstacle in human-AI interaction is algorithm aversion, where people prefer humans over AI advisers. However, the impact of this preference on the integration of advice remains unclear. Thus, we investigate the integration of AI advice in financial judgements and its underlying psychological drivers. In two experiments, participants (N=716) declared their advisor preference and engaged in incentivized investments, allocating money between two investment alternatives. After each initial investment decision, participants received advice from either an AI or a human financial advisor, offering them the opportunity to revise their investment. Results indicated that, overall, participants integrated AI advice similarly to human advice, even if they had a preference for humans. Notably, those with strong preferences integrated information from their preferred source more effectively. We introduce a comprehensive framework to explore the psychological drivers behind the integration of AI-generated information, which differ from those influencing the integration of human-generated information. These findings underscore AI's potential to enhance financial judgements, even for individuals initially averse to its use.

ABSTRACT. Numerous studies demonstrated a positive correlation between analytic thinking and the ability to recognize false news. Nevertheless, individual reasoning may have several limitations. According to the Argumentative Theory (Mercier & Sperber, 2011), some of these limitations can be reduced through discussion and argument exchange with others. In two studies we tested whether argument exchange enhances analytic thinking and improves the ability to recognize fake news. In the first study, we tested the effect of group argumentation by asking participants to evaluate the veracity of some news stories before and after participating in a group debate or writing a personal argument. The results showed that the ability to recognize fake news improved only for news stories discussed in groups. In the second study, we investigated the effect of dialogic structure (Kuhn & Modrek, 2021). Participants judged the fake news story before and after viewing arguments for and against its truthfulness. The arguments were presented in either list or dialogic structure format. The results revealed an increase in the accuracy of fake news judgment only in the dialogic structure condition. Argumentation can enhance reasoning by mitigating the constraints of solitary reasoning, and dialogic structure would play a crucial role in this process.

ABSTRACT. Mathematical skills play a significant role in various daily tasks and are associated with both earning potential and employability. While previous research has extensively investigated the role of cognitive and affective components in individual differences in mathematics performance, the role of metacognitive skills is often overlooked. Bellon et al. (2020) suggested that well-calibrated metacognitive monitoring (MCM) is associated with effective strategy selection, better mathematics performance and emotion regulation, especially in relation to math anxiety (MA). However, the limited existing research investigating the relationship between MCM and MA have yielded conflicting results (Desender & Sasanguie, 2022; Legg & Locker, 2009), leaving the nature of this relationship unclear. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between MCM, math anxiety and problem solving within the context of the meta-reasoning framework (Ackerman & Thompson, 2017). The study involved100 adult participants. Two mathematical tasks (Number Bisection Task (NBT) and Cognitive Reflection Task (CRT)) with prospective and retrospective confidence ratings were administered, followed by self-report measures for MA, generalized anxiety and social anxiety. We found a significant negative association between MA and accuracy on the NBT (r = -.42, p < .001) and CRT (r = -.33, p < .001). In terms of MCM, participants underestimated their performance on the NBT and overestimated their confidence on the CRT. Additionally, math anxiety and MCM accuracy were unrelated, however, each of these independently predicted mathematical performance. These findings underscore the need for targeted MA and MCM interventions, designed after considering distinct characteristics of numerical and text-based problem-solving tasks in education, with potential to improve mathematical performance.

ABSTRACT. What makes problems easier or more difficult to solve? People form metacognitive judgements based on implicit (experience-based) and explicit (belief-based) heuristic cues to monitor the progress of learning and problem-solving. For example, fluency, the perceived ease of processing, can be an implicit cue people rely on when evaluating their performance in memory and reasoning tasks. People can also use explicit cues based on beliefs or naïve theories about memory and reasoning when making metacognitive judgments. For example, recent meta-memory research shows that in addition to implicit cues such as fluency, beliefs about learning and memory may influence people’s judgements of learning (JOLs). However, little is known about the explicit cues that may shape metacognitive judgements during reasoning and problem-solving tasks. This study aims to identify explicit cues people may use to infer task difficulty and predict performance in a logical reasoning task. We manipulated certain task- and item-level characteristics of syllogisms. Participants are presented with syllogism pairs and asked to predict which syllogism is more likely to be solved correctly by hypothetical participants. By collecting metacognitive judgements prior to problem-solving, we aim to examine belief-based cues people may use in the absence of implicit, experience-based cues that arise during problem-solving.

ABSTRACT. Explanations are the by-products of comprehension; you've mastered an idea only once you can explain it properly. Belief in a particular explanation can have wide-ranging consequences for behavior. Accurate explanations, such as those developed and advanced through scientific discovery, can unlock deeper knowledge and lead to new ideas and technologies. Inaccurate explanations are fuel for conspiracy theory and misinformation. This symposium features research that reveals the power and purpose of explanatory reasoning: Jeff Zemla (Syracuse University) will describe new research on how mechanistic mindsets can lower perceptions of explanatory understanding. Ruth Byrne (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) will report experiments on preferences for simple causal and counterfactual explanations, for diagnoses and for predictions. Zach Horne (University of Edinburgh, UK) will talk about the explanations scientists generate during the course of their research. Sunny Khemlani (US Naval Research Laboratory) will discuss explanations that appeal to temporal relations, and the errors reasoners make when they are convinced their temporal explanations are true. And Emily Liquin (New York University, US) will focus on how curiosity drives children and adults to construct better explanations. The symposium will end with a panel discussion on the theoretical challenges in building models of explanatory reasoning.

ABSTRACT. “Money illusion” is the tendency to value money nominally rather than in real terms, ignoring the effect of inflation. In this paper, we explored the extent to which people are affected by money illusion and to which extent they perceive others to be affected by it. We investigated how likely people would be willing to buy and sell and how likely they think others would be willing to buy and sell in times of inflation. Across seven pre-registered studies, we found that, in the presence of inflation, participants believed they were less likely to buy and equally likely to sell as compared to others at a higher nominal price when there was no change in real price. Interestingly, we found that when directly asked, participants considered themselves to place more importance on the real value of money than nominal as compared to others, which showed people make irrational decisions despite claiming to be more rational than others. Further studies indicated that compared to self, individuals tend to perceive others as more likely to switch jobs based on the assessment of their nominal compensation rather than their real salary.

ABSTRACT. Status Quo Bias (SQB) is the preference for options that already exist over options that require change. We present a series of pre-registered experiments with samples of the general public (N = 2700) that aimed to diagnose the causes of SQB and, on this basis, to devise ways to reduce the bias with respect to climate policy. Experiment 1 demonstrates a large SQB about active travel schemes and further shows that people search for different kinds of information about it depending on whether a scheme is described as existing or planned. We relate this result to Query Theory, which proposes that an evaluation is sensitive to the question people ask themselves when undertaking it. Consistent with this, Experiment 2 shows that when a scheme is merely planned people seek information they expect to be negative. Experiment 3 tests alternative descriptions of a planned active travel initiative, each of which is designed to disrupt this mechanism linked to SQB. One framing (restoring positive properties of a town layout lost from previous times) partially mitigates the bias, removing about one-third of the effect. Our findings imply that SQB is a major obstacle for climate policy, but can be partly overcome.

ABSTRACT. We examined how Chinese and Euro-Canadians make inferences about the inner state based on outward appearance, tested across a range of social phenomena. Multiple studies showed that Chinese were more likely than Euro-Canadians to make inferences of inner state that deviated from outward appearance, whereas Euro-Canadians were more likely than Chinese to make inferences that was convergent with outward appearance. These cultural-specific patterns were observed regardless of whether inference was on human (e.g., friends and strangers) or non-human (e.g., hotels and restaurants) targets, whether the unit of analysis was a single person (e.g., a basketball player) or multiple persons (e.g., a couple), whether the design was within-participant or between-participant, and whether measures were numerical or not. Results were consistent across different dimensions of person perception, such as warmth (e.g., friends), competence (e.g., confidence), and morality (e.g., workplace sabotage). The effects, unexplained by the correspondence bias or need for cognitive closure, were mediated by the belief that appearance can be misleading, a conclusion supported by mediational and experimental evidence.

ABSTRACT. Social dilemmas are described as “wicked” when they involve additional obstacles to cooperation, such as unclear individual impact, doubts about the link between cooperation and outcomes, and difficulties tracking contributions. We study the effectiveness of a norm-nudging intervention in promoting cooperation in such a scenario: waste sorting. Given the difficulties in implementing economic and reputational incentives in this context, our intervention encourages individuals to prioritize moral values. We use a mixed factorial design, where presence/absence of the moral nudge is manipulated within-subjects, whereas level of cooperation of other players (high/low) is variated between-subjects. The task consists of a 16-round computerized waste sorting game in which participants allocate 7 kg of waste in each round, deciding how much to sort in separate bins. Choosing to sort requires 8 seconds per kg, while non-differentiating is immediate: time spent on sorting is the main dependent variable. Rounds 1-5 measure baseline behavior, 6-12 moral nudge intervention, and 13-16 post-nudge efficacy. We expect that moral nudges will enhance sustainable behaviors in both cooperative and non-cooperative conditions. The study aims to assess whether the moral nudge is effective in boosting cooperation and, if so, through what factors, to help designing targeted interventions to encourage sustainable behaviors.

ABSTRACT. How does the presence of concealed information impact people’s probability estimates and betting decisions? To investigate this question, we developed an experimental paradigm based on simple visual stimuli and conducted a series of studies. The stimuli consisted of grids of target and secondary color hexagons, with target color proportions ranging from 0 to 1. For full information stimuli, the colors of all hexagons were visible. For concealed information stimuli, the colors of some hexagons were concealed. In the estimation tasks, participants estimated the probability that a hexagon which is randomly selected from the full grid is of the target color. In the betting task, participants chose between a full and a concealed information stimulus with matching target color proportion. They won the bet if a randomly selected hexagon from the stimulus of their choice was of the target color. Results from our main study (N = 320) show that, relative to probability estimates for full information stimuli, estimates for concealed information stimuli shrunk toward a central value. For betting decisions, preferences shifted from concealed to full information stimuli with increasing target color proportion. We discuss divergences between probability estimates and betting decisions, individual differences, and implications for theories on types and levels of uncertainty.

ABSTRACT. Meta-Reasoning is a subdomain of metacognitive research that focuses on the monitoring and control processes involved in reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. To date, most metacognitive research has focussed on an individual’s thinking in contexts where they are expected to respond to all items. In this symposium, we present examples of meta-reasoning research that extends beyond these boundaries to include meta-reasoning of computerized systems, giving up tendencies of people, relations between metacognition and cultural values, and metacognitive aspects of advice taking.

ABSTRACT. A controversial claim in recent dual process accounts of reasoning is that intuitive processes not only lead to bias, but are also sensitive to the logical status of an argument. The logical intuition hypothesis draws upon evidence that reasoners take longer and are less confident on belief-logic conflict problems, irrespective of whether they give the correct logical response. Recent research suggests that ‘logical intuitions’ have little to do with logic, but arise instead through the operation of superficial heuristics that are independent of logical validity. In two experiments, we examined conflict detection effects on invalid AC and DA arguments, showing consistent ‘reverse’ detection effects, whereby participants took longer and were less confident on invalid unbelievable, non-conflict items compared to invalid, believable conflict problems. These findings suggest that conflict on these items likely occurs between two heuristic cues and that subjective, not objective conflict should be considered when measuring conflict detection. The findings are discussed in the context of contemporary dual process accounts of reasoning.

ABSTRACT. Dual process theories of human thinking propose that reasoning involves an interplay between intuitive and deliberative processes, with the prevailing idea that deliberation corrects biases originating from intuition. However, recent studies have challenged the corrective role of deliberation by showing that people can often provide correct responses intuitively. These studies suggest that deliberation may rather be used in response justification. To empirically test this hypothesis, we examined whether people could properly justify their responses to three types of reasoning problems: bat-and-ball problems, base-rates problems, and risky-choice economic bets. We used a two-block paradigm in which responses to the same problems were first given by participants under time-constrained, intuitive conditions and then unconstrained, deliberative conditions. In both cases, participants provided confidence ratings and justifications for their responses. We found that participants had higher accuracy and confidence in their responses when they had time to deliberate compared to when they responded intuitively. Critically, when they responded correctly, participants struggled to provide sound justifications for their intuitive responses, but they could properly justify the responses given after deliberation. These findings support the hypothesis that deliberation allows individuals to justify their intuitions and generate explicit reasons for their decisions, shedding light on an overlooked justificatory role of deliberative reasoning in dual process thinking.

ABSTRACT. In general, a negative association has been reported between an analytical cognitive style and religiosity. On the other hand, it is plausible that Easterners, known as dialectical thinkers, accept religiosity and its religious skepticism dialectically. British, French and Japanese people participated in the present web survey. They were given questionnaires on religiosity (the subscales were pro-religiosity, divine protection, and retribution), anti-religiosity, wisdom judgement on religious dialectic thinking, and thinking style (the subscales were preference for intuitive thinking (PIT), preference for effortful thinking (PET), actively open-minded thinking (AOT) and close-minded thinking (CMT)). An individual who agrees or disagrees with both religiosity and anti-religiosity is considered a religious dialectical thinker. We found that (1) the retribution score of the Japanese was higher than that of Westerners, (2) the Japanese were more religious dialectical thinkers than Westerners, and the Japanese and British judged religious dialectical thinking wiser than the French, (3) in general, the religious belief of the British and French was suppressed by AOT, whereas the religious belief of the Japanese was enhanced by PIT. We conclude that the suppression of religious belief by the analytic cognitive style is characteristic to Westerners, and that Japanese are more religious dialectical thinkers than Westerners.

ABSTRACT. We report an adversarial collaboration evaluating Attali and Bar-Hillel’s (2020) claim that the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) measures nothing but mathematical aptitude. We compare the predictive validity of an 8 item CRT with an 8 item Mathematical Aptitude Test (MAT), consisting of comparably difficult mathematical items which lack intuitive lures. Our dependent variables include measures of beliefs, preferences, and a novel reflection scale consisting of non-mathematical items which also possess intuitively appealing incorrect answers. Even after disattenuating the MAT to correct for its imperfect reliability, the CRT retains significant incremental predictive validity – both overall and for most of the individual items comprising our aggregated dependent variables. Latent variable analyses reveal that CRT scores are determined by both mathematical aptitude and reflective tendencies, but that only the latter accounts for the test’s surplus predictive validity.

ABSTRACT. Meta-reasoning research has shown that many students are poor at accurately monitoring their performance on problem-solving tasks. This is problematic, as it is key for effective self-regulated learning: Without accurate self-assessment, students are unlikely to select a new task that is suitable for their current level of performance. We have found that self-assessment and task-selection skills can be trained, but there was substantial variability in the effectiveness of the training, and room for further improvement. First attempts to further improve self-assessment and task-selection accuracy after training, by providing feedback on students’ self-assessment accuracy (a pre-condition for accurate task selection), proved unsuccessful. That could have been due to the fact that most students overestimated themselves, resulting in 75% of the feedback having double-negative valence: Informing students that their self-assessment was incorrect and that their performance was lower than they thought. This might have resulted in high feelings of threat, low self-efficacy, and therefore, failure to see the usefulness of adopting the feedback in task selection. We present a study (currently being conducted) in which we test this hypothesis, by experimentally manipulating self-assessment feedback valence (negative-negative, negative-positive, no feedback) and investigating the effects on students’ feelings of challenge/threat, self-efficacy, and task-selection accuracy.

ABSTRACT. Rationality influences decision-making skills more than intelligence does. A crucial element of rationality that influences judgement and decision-making is resistance to cognitive biases. Yet, school standards do not explicitly mention resistance to cognitive biases as part of their critical thinking standards. Hence, it is critical for the education system to teach people how to override cognitive biases if we want to improve people’s decision-making skills on a larger scale. This review aims to synthesise the existing literature on debiasing training in educational settings and its impacts on rationality. We performed a meta-analysis of 49 studies, consisting of 53 randomised experiments (k) with 379 effect sizes (n). There was an overall moderate positive impact (g = 0.26, 95% CI [0.18, 0.35], n = 53, k = 379, p < 0.001). Interventions were significantly better than no-intervention control groups and active control groups. However, there was a significant decline in test performance between post-test and delayed post-test. Using a large sample of 10,902 participants, we found a moderate positive effect of teaching debiases training on reducing biases. Teaching debiasing appears to be helpful in reducing biases among students—and gains are retained over time— suggesting we can increase rationality.

ABSTRACT. Higher-order cognitive processes, such as decision-making, rely on core first-order executive functions (EF): working memory, inhibition, and shifting. The developmental trajectory of EF undergoes significant changes throughout childhood, influencing how individuals interact with the environment. Despite numerous studies attempting to elucidate the connection between cognitive processes and decision-making paradigms, conclusive results remain elusive. This systematic review aims to comprehensively synthesize the roles of each core EF (working memory, inhibition, and shifting) within decision-making paradigms in the age group of 0-12 years. This encompasses scenarios like delay of gratification, risky decision-making, prosocial behavior, and probabilistic decision-making. The review will adhere to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Results are under progress and will be available by the date of the conference. A developmental relationship is expected, indicating that EF increasingly shape the behavioral decision-making responses of older children. The findings are projected to shed light on how cognitive processes contribute to decision-making mechanisms across contexts. Beyond theoretical advancements, the outcomes of this study bear practical significance, potentially informing targeted interventions and strategies for optimizing decision-making processes in educational and developmental contexts.

ABSTRACT. Cognitive capacity is a well-established predictor of reasoning performance across all ages. Recent studies highlight that adults with higher cognitive capacity are more likely to rely on accurate intuitions rather than deliberately correcting faulty ones. However, it remains unclear whether this pattern applies to younger participants, and whether it intensifies with age. Here, we compared the reasoning performance of late adolescents (12th graders) with that of early adolescents (7th graders), focusing on whether cognitive capacity more effectively predicts accurate intuition or the successful deliberate correction of initial erroneous intuitions. We used a two-response paradigm to differentiate between intuitive and deliberate responses. Participants were asked to respond twice to the same problem. First, they gave an initial intuitive response under time and cognitive constraints, followed by a second deliberative response with no constraints. Participants responded both to the bat-and-ball and base-rate tasks. We assessed cognitive capacity using an adolescent-appropriate version of Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices. Preliminary findings show that late adolescents with higher cognitive capacity appear to mirror adults in relying on correct intuitive responses, while early adolescents with higher cognitive capacity predominantly utilize deliberate reasoning for correct outcomes, suggesting that the relation between cognitive capacity and sound intuiting evolves with increasing age.

ABSTRACT. Previous studies suggest that, when pressed for time, both adults and children tend to share more generously with others. This study explores the developmental roots of fairness in preschool children (aged 4 to 5) through a modified dictator game. Children from six nursery schools participated in a one-shot anonymous interaction in a within-between subject design. Children played both a standard "give" version of the dictator game, where they could choose how many stickers to donate, and a "take" version, where they had to choose how many stickers to take from the endowment of another child. In the Time Pressure condition, children were encouraged to reallocate resources within a time limit, with the penalty of receiving nothing. As anticipated, initial resource allocation significantly influenced the quantity of stickers donated, with children in the "Give" condition displaying less generosity than those in the "Take" condition. More interestingly, time pressure consistently prompted increased sticker sharing across both allocation conditions. These findings suggest that children exhibit a sense of fairness and altruism from preschool age, regardless of endowment or status quo effects. This study contributes valuable insights into the early emergence of prosocial behaviors and the intricate interplay between contextual factors in preschoolers' decision-making.

ABSTRACT. Analogical transfer, the ability to generalize a solution onto a seemingly different but functionally similar problem, has the potential to boost individual learning beyond similar-looking situations. However, analogical transfer also involves another ability that is key for efficient learning and may be supported early in education: the ability to disregard irrelevant information in favor of relevant information. To date, analogical transfer has been repeatedly investigated in young children, but their ability to prioritize truly relevant over irrelevant, distracting or misleading, information remains understudied. Therefore, in this study, we tested whether children between 2.5 and 5.5 years (N = 92, ongoing) could transfer relevant information despite irrelevant, distracting or misleading, information. Children participated in a play session at day-care facilities, where they attempted to transfer relevant tool-use knowledge across two analogical problems despite a distracting or a misleading problem solved in between. Preliminary results that analogical transfer despite irrelevant, distracting or misleading, information develops in early childhood, and that it may be available to children as young as 2.5 years. The results showed that set-shifting, a core executive function, may be key to transfers despite misleading information. The study may inform future interventions focused on relevant cognitive capacities beyond child’s age.

ABSTRACT. In true-belief and false-belief tasks, an object is moved from location A to location B in the presence or absence of a character. The experimenter then asks three questions: a test question, followed by two control questions. Young children (aged under 4) manage to respond correctly to the true-belief task, but fail the false-belief task. Conversely, from the age of 4 onwards, children start to succeed on the false-belief task, but fail to give the correct answer on the supposedly simpler true-belief task. This surprising result could be examined from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. The test question is ambiguous (it can correspond to several interpretations) and the order of questions contributes to this. Indeed, in logical reasoning, the premises are presented before the conclusion. In belief tasks, however, the premises (control questions) are presented after the conclusion (test question), which could reduce success. By asking the control questions before the test question, the latter may appear less trivial to young children, helping them to grasp the expected interpretation of the test question and, consequently, improving their performance. 60 children aged 3 to 6 completed the true-belief and false-belief tasks, with the original order or with a modified order.

ABSTRACT. People are more likely to believe information to be true if they have encountered it before. Research on this truth-by-repetition effect (TBRE) typically only considered one’s native language. In five experiments (N = 1344), we examined the TBRE in multi-lingual contexts (Belgium, Spain, US, Mexico). We found that the TBRE emerges in the non-native language, and is as strong as the TBRE in the native language. Furthermore, we found a ‘cross-language’ TBRE: repetition increases the subjective truth even if the language changes between repetitions, and this cross-language effect is as strong as the effect within the same language, be it in a non-native or the native language. Theoretically, these results demonstrate that repetition impacts beliefs about truth on the conceptual rather than merely the perceptual level. Practically, the results highlight the pervasive potential of the TBRE in a globalized world where many people consume information in different languages.

ABSTRACT. One of the distinctive features of human behavior is the ability to use social information, i.e., all the information that individuals can acquire and learn from others. To use social information effectively, humans must estimate its reliability using signals like the informants’ accuracy and confidence. This task is not straightforward: behavioral evidence has shown that humans waste valuable social information. Nevertheless, we lack evidence on the cognitive sources of social information waste, and on which signals are integrated or used suboptimally in individual decision models. To fill these gaps, we use a joint perceptual decision-making task in which participants interact with different artificial agents and can use feedback on the agents’ judgments and confidence to modify an individual perceptual judgment. We manipulate the agents’ behavior along three main dimensions, i.e., their perceptual accuracy, their confidence distribution, and the reliability of their confidence assessment. Leveraging behavioral analyses and Bayesian modeling, we disclose crucial factors that can predict social information waste, including overconfidence and scarce sensitivity to the agent’s confidence reliability. Our preliminary results reveal the emergence of suboptimal individual decision models and highlight the cognitive underpinnings of social information waste.

ABSTRACT. The trivalent functional theory of the truth of conditionals proposed by de Finetti in 1928 has received a great deal of attention in the philosophical, linguistic and psychological literature. This theory validates the equation between conditional probabilities and conditional probabilities and has many other desirable semantic and logical properties. However, it also predicts that conditional partitioning sentences of the form "if A, C and if not-A, D" are always false. Such sentences are commonly used and accepted in everyday life: for example, "if A, C and if not A, not C" can be used to express that C is independent of A. Building on linguistic work in dynamic semantics, Finetti's] conditional C|A can be interpreted in a presuppositional form: "A and C presuppose A", which corresponds to the material condition A|A ⊃ (A and C). Partition conditional sentences presuppose "A or not A". They therefore correspond to the conjunction of two material conditionals (A|(A or not A) ⊃ (A and C) and (not-A|(A or not-A) ⊃ (not-A and D), i.e. the disjunction A and C or not-A and D. We present preliminary experimental data in support of this hypothesis.

ABSTRACT. What sense does it have to establish a relationship between the art of saying and the shape of thinking, between rhetoric and thought? Psychorhetoric inherits from the art of persuading through discourse insights on the intimate connection between thought and language, focusing at the same time on the rules of communication and the processes of thought. Furthermore, the search for meaning in view of an objective (the interpretative function) characterizes the general activity of the human cognitive system, including perception, with an adaptive aim. The proposed psychorhetorical and interpretative perspective, supported by recent experimental evidence, will try to explain what seems to be the “enigma of reason”: on the one hand the typical human creativity (investigated by the experimental paradigm of insight problem solving), and on the other hand the intrinsic tendency to error that seems to characterize most of our reasoning (biases in reasoning and decision making). The representation of our mind that emerges from the psychology of thought has a profound inner contrast, which has remained largely latent. An explanation for the phenomenon will be proposed and recent experimental evidence in support of it will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. Beliefs in science vary depending on the evidence. But beliefs that people are prepared to make sacrifices for—sometimes their lives—are rarely based on evidence at all: what matters is the emotions that they evoke in true believers. We bolster this scientific hypothesis with evidence. According the theory of mental models, emotions and mental propositions are parallel signals that can interact. They can work independently in everyday life when a person infers the credibility of a belief rom the proportion of evidential models that support it, and when a person feels anxiety or elation for no apparent reason. But they interact in various circumstances. Untestable beliefs are a crucial case. They concern morals, religions, cultural norms, social conventions, and even sports and the rules of games. The model theory predicts a two-way causal relation: an increase in emotion about them causes an increase in their believability, and vice versa. Another factor is a growing ‘attachment’ that individuals can feel towards certain ideas and their symbols. We review experiments that corroborate these factors. The results suggest that the theory is at the beginning of an explanation of fanaticism.

ABSTRACT. Recently, researchers have investigated how aging affects curiosity, a key factor in maintaining mental health throughout adulthood. Studies have not, however, delved into potential age-related shifts in counterfactual curiosity – the inclination to seek information about outcomes of forgone options, also when this does not aid future decisions. Though lacking preparatory value, such behavior may play a role in managing regret. Since younger and older adults appear to handle regret differently, their levels of counterfactual curiosity may also diverge.

In three online experiments (N=620), we investigated counterfactual curiosity in younger (age≤40 years) and older adults (age≥65 years). Participants played independent rounds of a card-drawing game, each offering a choice between two decks containing cards that could increase, decrease, or leave unaffected their initial endowment. After having seen the outcome of their choice, participants could access information about the outcome of the forgone deck. This constitutes non-instrumental counterfactual information, as the rounds were independent.

In all experiments, a strong effect of the outcome experienced was observed, with counterfactual curiosity being more prominent after negative outcomes. An effect of age was also found, with older adults being overall more curious than younger ones, but only when choices were deliberate and information was free.

ABSTRACT. The study of counterfactual thinking has been mainly characterized by two approaches: Initially, researchers concentrated on the fault lines that make some events more mutable than others; later, the focus shifted to the actor's goals and how past goals might have been achieved. The present research aims to show that a given antecedent is mutated when the mental representation of a lived experience makes available with little processing effort a counterfactual alternative which is also potentially effective. The first study showed that the tendency to change an external event ¬ If I had had more time…” – varied significantly depending on how much the context offered the possibility and benefit of more time. The second study showed that the tendency to mentally modify a decision did not depend on whether or not the decision could actually be changed later, in contrast to what happened when participants were asked to produce prefactual thoughts. Thus, these results challenge the idea that general principles govern the generation of counterfactual thoughts. Rather, an event, whether controllable or uncontrollable, is changed if the alternative is perceived as relevant, i.e. if it requires little cognitive effort and effectively contributes to undoing the undesirable outcome (Sperber & Wilson, 1995).

ABSTRACT. Children and adults who knew nothing about computer programming developed informal algorithms that solve recursive rearrangements of the orders of objects. Everything that can be computed can also be expressed in terms of numbers. Hence, a crucial question in intellectual development is whether such individuals can develop informal algorithms that are the foundation of arithmetic, namely, recursive ones for addition and multiplication. We report two experiments using a simple environment that is based on an ‘infinite abacus' and that suffices for any computable function (according to the Church-Turing hypothesis). It consists of a factory that produces wooden planks, and a vehicle that moves them to and from storage locations (i.e., memories) and to the output. The first experiment tested 10 year-old children. They created recursive algorithms for the identity function (x = x) and addition (x + y), but they failed with multiplication (x * y), which calls for the composition of identity and multiplication. The second experiment tested adult participants. The majority of them used either for-loops or while-loops for recursion, and they were able to devise informal algorithms for addition and multiplication. We conclude that the development of arithmetic does not depend on formal axiomatic systems, as logicians used in trying to prove that arithmetic is nothing more than the logic of natural numbers, but rather on meaningful kinematic models of items moving from one location to another, and the ability to conceive of various sorts of loops of repeated moves.

ABSTRACT. We validated Ackerman and Thompson’s (2017) MetaReasoning theory by studying the Feeling of Rightness (FOR) in the context of consumer choice. In two experiments using the two-response paradigm (Thompson et al., 2011), participants selected between two options of a given consumer product (e.g., two bars of chocolate). The brand of product was either the participant’s preferred brand or a competing brand. Some of the products were labelled as sustainable versions of the product. Similarly, some of the products could advertise a feature (e.g., 30% less sugar). Participants selected which of the two consumer products they were more interested in purchasing while under time pressure, then rated their FOR about their choice. Subsequently, they had the option of keeping their choice in a hypothetical shopping basket or to change their choice. We found that FOR is comparatively lower on trials where sustainability and brand preference conflicted and where sustainability and product feature conflicted. Strong FORs also translated into higher probability of one keeping their chosen product in their shopping basket. These data suggest that in a real-world context, the availability of sustainable or feature-laden product options may give consumers a reason to doubt and reconsider their normal purchasing decisions.

ABSTRACT. Human decision-making is often characterized as an interplay between fast intuition and slow deliberation (Kahneman, 2011). Influential “fast-and-slow” dual process models that capitalize on the distinction between more intuitive and deliberate thought processes have become increasingly popular in psychology, computer science, economics, philosophy, and related fields (Bonnefon & Rahwan, 2020; De Neys, 2022; Kahneman, 2011). While most research has focused on the role of these processes in our decision-making, less has been said about our perception of these processes. Emerging work is trying to pinpoint how information about the intuitive or deliberate nature of an interaction partner’s decision is affecting our evaluation of the quality and trust in this decision. For instance, people prefer others engage in deliberation for difficult decisions and rely on intuition in easy decisions (Kupor et al, 2014). In certain domains such as picking a movie to watch or a romantic partner, intuition seems to be favored over deliberation (Oktar & Lombrozo, 2022). In the same vein, we want to pinpoint which factors influence the perception of decision-makers. For instance, if we know that a decision-maker relies more on intuition or deliberation when solving a reasoning problem, do we think he is good at reasoning? do we think he is smart? would we trust his advice? We’ll present our first results investigating whether participants prefer deliberation or intuition and whether information concerning previous accuracy on reasoning problems also influence these preferences (i.e., will high previous accuracy lead to higher appreciation than low previous accuracy or no information?).

ABSTRACT. Generative AI has become ubiquitous in our professional and personal lives. However, the psychological literature is only beginning to understand how AI thinks. In this project, we explored the ability of two generative large language models (LLMs) – ChatGPT and Google Bard – to provide accurate estimates of their confidence in predictions they made about future events. Specifically, we asked 50 human participants and each of the LLMs to predict the outcomes of 150 NFL games and provide confidence estimates (50-100%) for each prediction. The human participants accurately predicted game winners 60.8% of the time but displayed minimal confidence-accuracy calibration (gamma = .06 [95% CI = .06 - .06], meta-d’ = 0.09). ChatGPT was marginally more accurate than humans (66.4% correct; p = .21) and demonstrated better confidence-accuracy calibration (gamma = .13 [95% CI = .11 - .15], meta-d’ = 0.30). Bard was marginally less accurate (56.7%) than humans (p = .35) and ChatGPT (p = .11) but displayed better confidence-accuracy calibration (gamma = .24 [95% CI = .22 - .26], meta-d’ = 0.51). These results suggest that making accurate confidence judgments in this domain was difficult for humans and AI – but AI generally provided more accurate confidence judgments than humans.