Trends in Cognitive Sciences
OpinionThe ‘whys’ and ‘whens’ of individual differences in thinking biases
Introduction
Since the 1960s, a myriad of studies in the cognitive sciences have demonstrated biases in human thinking – that is, systematic and predictable deviations from formal norms, such as the laws of logic, the theory of probability, or the axioms of rational choice 1, 2. In general, people have been shown to have a strong tendency to base their judgments on fast intuitive impressions [1]. Although this intuitive or so-called ‘heuristic’ thinking can sometimes be useful, it can also cue responses that conflict with formal norms and bias people's reasoning 1, 3, 4. Most individuals display these thinking biases, but people show substantial and consistent differences in their propensity to do so. These individual differences have been at the forefront of thinking and reasoning research for more than a decade 4, 5.
Cognitive scientists have proposed numerous answers to the question of why some individuals tend to produce biased responses, whereas others do not. In this article, we offer two perspectives on how to organize this literature. In a first section, we organize current research into three key positions, which assign different cognitive loci to thinking biases (storage failure, monitoring failure, inhibition failure). In a second section, we introduce a different, albeit closely related, organization of the literature. We suggest that, instead of focusing on why individuals differ, we may consider when they start to differ in the reasoning process. Although these two questions are highly intricate, we will suggest that they bring two equally useful perspectives on outstanding questions in thinking biases research. We will conclude, in particular, that considering the ‘whens’ of individual differences in thinking biases make these differences appear less profound than what their ‘whys’ would suggest. That is, individual differences in reasoning may typically arise at a late stage of the reasoning process, up until which all reasoners follow the same cognitive path.
Section snippets
The ‘whys’
Quite naturally, 50 years of research into thinking biases have resulted in an overwhelming variety of views and interpretations about their nature and cause 6, 7, 8, 9. Our goal here is to develop an overview of the key positions in this debate, rather than to provide an exhaustive taxonomy. We link these key positions to three elementary components of the reasoning process (Figure 1, top panel). In very general terms, one can argue that reasoning is based on at least three building blocks:
The ‘whens’
So far, we have organized thinking bias research in a partition that closely tracks the elementary components of reasoning: storage, monitoring, and inhibition. Bias (and the subsequent divergence between biased and unbiased reasoners) could result from a failure within each of these components. Although this focus on the cognitive locus of bias has unquestionably proven useful, we suspect that it has detracted attention from an equally important question, that of the timing of the divergence
Concluding remarks
Human reasoners often display thinking biases, but not all do to the same extent. Research on thinking biases has offered numerous explanations of these individual differences, which we have tentatively organized in two different but closely related ways. A focus on the ‘whys’ of thinking biases would distinguish between at least three main possible cognitive loci of bias (storage, monitoring, inhibition). As an alternative to the ‘whys’, a focus on the ‘whens’ would distinguish between
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