Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

According to a classic view of reasoning, intuition is fast but fallible, while reflection is slow but reliable. Biases,therefore, emerge when a reasoner’s intuitions are wrong and they fail to notice. Recent evidence, however, suggests thatpeople may be aware when their intuitions are incorrect. A possible explanation reason for this is that both correct and incorrectresponses are cued in parallel, but the strongly-cued incorrect response is given unless people can inhibit it. We tested thisexplanation using base rate neglect problems, and recorded participants’ mouse cursor movements as they chose betweenpossible answers under time pressure. Descriptions affected both participants’ early movements and ultimate responses, andinterfered with their use of the base rates, while base rates rarely interfered with participants’ use of descriptions, and then onlyat a later point in time. Thus, despite suggestive findings elsewhere, our results support the classic of view reasoning.