Paul A. Klaczynski

Goal-oriented critical reasoning and individual differences in critical reasoning biases

In 4 experiments, the relationships among critical reasoning, personal goals, general intellectual ability, and information-processing style were explored. Three critical reasoning competencies were investigated: the law of large numbers, the intuitive analysis of covariance, and the ability to detect flaws in experimental designs. Participants were presented problems that involved goal-enhancing, goal-neutral, and goal-threatening evidence. There were 2 main findings: (a) Although general ability predicted 2 components of critical reasoning, biases in reasoning were better predicted by information processing style (i.e., rational vs. intuitive). (b) Reasoning on the goal-enhancing and neutral problems was less sophisticated than reasoning on threatening problems. Depth of processing seems to be a primary mechanism underlying motivated reasoning. In addition, information processing style is an individual difference variable that moderates the extent of reasoning biases. Similar results were obtained across different forms of critical thinking.

Personal theories, intellectual ability, and epistemological beliefs: adult age differences in everyday reasoning biases.

Age-related differences in everyday reasoning biases were explored. In each of 2 social domains, examination of theoretical beliefs and biases along 2 dimensions of scientific reasoning, involving the law of large numbers and the evaluation of experimental evidence, revealed that, across age groups, scientific reasoning was used to reject evidence that contradicted prior beliefs; relatively cursory reasoning was used to accept belief-consistent evidence. Biased reasoning was more common among middle-aged and older adults than among young adults. Dispositions to engage in analytic processing were negatively related to biases, but intellectual abilities and bias were not related. The findings support a 2-process view of adult cognitive development and suggest that the tendency to rely on heuristic information processing increases with age.

Adolescent identity : Rational vs. experiential processing, formal operations, and critical thinking beliefs

Numerous studies have attempted to determine social and cognitive predictors of identity status. The present study introduced a new and promising variable into these endeavors: the extent to which adolescents rely on rational vs. experiential information processing. To investigate the utility of this construct, 49 adolescent volunteers were administered multiple measures of formal operations, two critical thinking questionnaires, the Rational Versus Experiential Inventory (S. Epstein, R. Pacini, V. Denes-Raj, and H. Heier [1995] “Individual Differences in Rational and Analytical Information Processing,” unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts) and the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status—II (G. Adams, C. Bennion, and K. Huh [1989] “Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status: A Reference Manual,” Unpublished manuscript, University of Guelph), as a measure of identity status. A measure of rational/experiential processing was found to be correlated significantly with measures of both formal operations and critical thinking beliefs. In a series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses, rational/experiential processing predicted most identity status scores even after the variance in identity status associated with formal operations and critical thinking had been controlled. These findings, although preliminary, suggest that developmental researchers look beyond traditional predictors of identity and toward possibly more fundamental aspect of human information processing.

Age and Experiential Differences in Strategy Generation and Information Requests for Solving Everyday Problems

The role of experience in understanding age differences in strategy generation and information requests for solving everyday problems was explored in young and older adults. Participants received three hypothetical problems dealing with going to doctor’s offices and going to dinner parties and were probed extensively for their strategies and information they would like to solve the problems. Experience with these two domains was assessed by participants’ reports of their experience, script knowledge, and the presence of experience in problem definitions. No age differences were found in these experience measures. Age differences were found in the number of strategies generated and the amount of information requested to solve the problem. Two patterns of everyday problem solving were uncovered: an exhaustive style (involving inferential problem definition, elaborate strategy generation, and information requests); and an experiential style (involving experiential problem definition, less strategy generation, and fewer information requests). The results are interpreted within a model that uses individuals’ problem definitions to understand multiple aspects of everyday problem-solving performance.

Representations as mediators of adolescent deductive reasoning.

In Experiment 1, preadolescents, middle adolescents, and late adolescents were presented 3 deductive reasoning tasks. With some important exceptions, conditional reasoning improved with age on problems containing permission conditional relations, and reasoning fallacies increased with age on problems containing causal conditional relations. The results of Experiments 2a and 2b indicated that problem type (i.e., permission or causal) does not mediate the activation of conditional reasoning skills. Rather, valid conditional inferences are more common on problems for which plausible alternative antecedents can be generated than on problems for which alternative antecedent generation is difficult. Conditional rules for which alternative antecedent generation is difficult may be misrepresented as biconditionals, resulting in biconditional rather than conditional reasoning.

Intellectual ability, rationality, and intuitiveness as predictors of warranted and unwarranted optimism for future life events

The social calculations involved in assessing ones life chances were examined. Undergraduates estimated the probability that they would experience positive and negative life events and the probability that others would experience the same events. Participants evinced considerable bias in their estimates, expressing the belief that they would experience more desirable and fewer undesirable events than others. Important individual differences in these biases were found. Particularly regarding academic/career events, those with superior intellectual ability expressed more bias than their peers. Surprisingly, even students in the bottom third of intellectual ability displayed considerable academic/career bias. Cognitive style was also linked with the extensiveness of biased perceptions: individuals high in Need for Cognition were more optimistically biased than their peers in the academic/career domain. Also, relative to participants whose cognitive style was more rational, those who relied on intuitive processing believed that both positive and negative events were more likely to be experienced, by both the self and others. Finally, students who eventually dropped out of college were lower in Need for Cognition and had more unrealistic expectations regarding both positive and negative life events than students who remained in school. These findings are discussed in terms of general adolescent phenomena, such as individuation, identity, and the personal fable, and cognitive factors, such as the knowledge of base rate information and the availability heuristic.

Development of quantitative reasoning and gender biases

One hundred twenty-seven 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children were presented large or small samples of own-gender enhancing or other-gender enhancing observations. Children read arguments based on the observations, rated argument intelligence, judged the number of other children to whom the observations could be generalized, and provided verbal justifications for their judgments. Own-gender reasoning biases declined with age; these declines were, however, partially accounted for by declines in the strength of self-reported gender affiliations. Reasoning biases--demonstrated by problem-to-problem shifts in reasoning quality-were constrained by sample size, indicating a modest degree of rationality even among 7-year-olds. Specifically, biases co-existed with reasonably limited generalizations from small samples of own-gender evidence and with reasonably extensive generalizations from large samples of other-gender evidence. Children were thus able to satisfy motivations for own-gender favoritism and reason in accord with the law of large numbers. Several explanations of the findings-based on changes in the salience of gender, multiple classification skills, and the ability to reason independently from beliefs-are offered.

Is rationality really “bounded” by information processing constraints?

Extremist views on normative rationality fail to address differences in responding owing to intellectual ability or epistemic self-regulation. Individual difference research thus raises serious questions concerning the scientific utility of universal rationality and universal irrationality theories. However, recent data indicate that computational capacity theories do not account adequately for within-subject variability in normative responding, memory-reasoning independence, and instances of ability-normative reasoning independence.

Role of content domain, logic training, and IQ in rule acquisition and transfer

Four experiments were conducted to examine the hypothesis that when incorrect strategies for solving domain-specific problems were contradicted, a domain-general rule would be induced and would subsequently facilitate transfer to problems outside of the original domain. Experiments involved examining transfer from problems designed to elicit the «permission» and the «causal» schemata described by P. W. Cheng and K. J. Holyoak (1985). Results indicated that (a) training might have led to the construction of a domain-independent rule only when source problems were causal, (b) transfer was more likely when source problems were causal than when source problems were permissions, and (c) transfer from causal problems was weakly related to IQ, whereas transfer from permissions was strongly related to IQ