Thinking Disposition Education Improves Cognitive Reflection: Experimental Results from Two Intervention Studies

Abstract

Cognitive reflection is a construct measuring one’s ability to disengage automatic or type I processing and instead activate effortful deliberation, described as type II processing in dual process theories. Successfully overriding intuitive responses is posited to rely on, in part, trait-like attributes known as thinking dispositions, though a causal link has not been established. The present research is the first randomized controlled trial investigating the effect of a novel thinking dispositionintervention (TDI)—a 7-week educational curriculum—on cognitive reflection performance. In Study 1, subjects (N = 338) were randomized to either the TDI or a control condition. In Study 2, subjects (N = 86) were randomized to either the TDI or a reasoning intervention. Bayesian regression was utilized to obtain posterior distributions of the treatment effect(s). We find that subjects exposed to the curriculum aimed at promoting thinking dispositions exhibited greater increases in cognitive reflection than a control condition; however, the effects appear limited when compared to a reasoning intervention. Implications for dual process theory are discussed.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.