Neuroscience

Neglect

Test (biology)

Debiasing

Mathematics

Biology

Operating system

Statistics

Psychiatry

Cognition

Paleontology

Cognitive psychology

Management

Psychology

Economics

Matching (statistics)

Microeconomics

Psychological intervention

Cognitive bias

Incentive

Computer science

Task (project management)

Process (computing)

Social psychology

Academy of Management Proceedings

Research on judgment and decision making has suggested that the System 2 process of ‘thinking slow’ can help people to improve their decision making by reducing well-established statistical decision biases (including base rate neglect, probability matching, and the conjunction fallacy). In a large (N = 1709) pre-registered study, we compare the effects of individual differences and behavioral interventions to test the relative benefits of thinking slow compared to a control condition, a thinking fast condition, an incentive condition, and a condition that combines fast and slow thinking. We also draw on the rule-based reasoning literature to examine the benefits of possessing a simple form of a rule needed to solve a specific focal problem. Overall, we find a large cost from thinking fast and a small benefit from thinking slow or from pursuing accuracy incentives. The difference in performance between interventions to think fast and think slow is comparable to a one-scale point difference on the 4-point Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). Inferential rules contribute unique explanatory power and interact with specific conditions and individual differences to support the idea that System 2 benefits from a combination of slower processes and appropriate task knowledge.

Comparing Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow: Interventions, Individual Differences, and Rules