An analytic cognitive style denotes a propensity to set aside highly salient intuitions when engaging in problem solving. We assess the hypothesis that an analytic cognitive style is associated with a history of questioning, altering, and rejecting supernatural claims, both religious and paranormal. In two studies, we examined associations of God beliefs, religious engagement, conventional religious beliefs and paranormal beliefs with performance measures of cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style. An (...) analytic cognitive style negatively predicted both religious and paranormal beliefs when controlling for cognitive ability as well as religious engagement, sex, age, political ideology, and education. Participants more willing to engage in analytic reasoning were less likely to endorse supernatural beliefs. Further, an association between analytic cognitive style and religious engagement was mediated by religious beliefs, suggesting that an analytic cognitive style negatively affects religious engagement via lower acceptance of conventional religious beliefs. Results for types of God belief indicate that the association between an analytic cognitive style and God beliefs is more nuanced than mere acceptance and rejection, but also includes adopting less conventional God beliefs, such as Pantheism or Deism. Our data are consistent with the idea that two people who share the same cognitive ability, education, political ideology, sex, age and level of religious engagement can acquire very different sets of beliefs about the world if they differ in their propensity to think analytically. (shrink)

Belief in astrology remains strong even today, and one of the explanations why some people endorse paranormal explanations is the individual differences in analytical thinking. Therefore, the main aim of this paper was to determine the effects of priming an analytical or intuitive thinking style on the credulity of participants. In two experiments (N= 965), analytic thinking was induced and the source of fake profile (astrological reading vs. psychological testing) was manipulated and participants’ prior paranormal beliefs, anomalous explanation, (...) cognitive reflection, and depression were measured. Although analytic thinking was proved to be hard to induce experimentally, the results showed that analytic thinking predicts credulity and belief in the paranormal was linked with experiencing more anomalous experiences and more paranormal explanations. The more people were able to think analytically, the less credulous they were as reflected in the lower acceptance of fake profile as accurate. (shrink)

Belief bias is the tendency for prior beliefs to influence people's deductive reasoning in two ways: through the application of a simple belief-heuristic and through the application of more effortful reasoning for unbelievable conclusions. Previous research indicates that cognitive ability is the primary determinant of the effect of beliefs on accuracy. In the current study, we show that the mere tendency to engage analytic reasoning is responsible for the effect of cognitive ability on motivated reasoning. The implications (...) of this finding for our understanding of the impact of individual differences on belief bias are discussed. (shrink)

An underlying assumption of default-interventionist dual-process theory (DI-DPT) of reasoning is that humans tend to act as cognitive misers. Although miserly cognitive processing occurs when indiv...

According to many experiments in cross-cultural psychology, East Asians exhibit holistic cognitive style typified by use of resemblance heuristics, field dependence, external sources of causation, intuitive forms of reasoning, and interdependent forms of social thinking. Holistic cognitive style contrasts with analytic cognitive style, which is common to Westerners. Section 1 presents information on the background of Buddhism’s entry into and treatment by China. Section 2 discusses experimental evidence for the representation of holistic (...) class='Hi'>cognitive style in contemporary East Asians. Section 3 presents preliminary evidence for the interaction between holistic cognitive style and the history of ideas in China at large. Section 4 analyzes two discussions of the same philosophical problem conducted by Chinese Buddhist philosopher Fazang and Indian Vedic philosopher Shankara. It is provisionally argued that the interpretive strategies displayed by Fazang interact with several components of holistic cognitive style, in contrast with Shankara. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

Summary Background. Aims. Sample. Method. Results. Conclusion. The paper considers aberrant behaviour in the context of cognitive style with reference to both diagnosis and treatment. The aims of the study were to investigate whether the style of pupils with behaviour problems was different from that of children with no reported problems, and also to consider how pupils of different style manifested their problem behaviours. The sample comprised 83 male pupils aged 10?18 years from two residential special (...) schools. The sample were given the Cognitive Styles Analysis to assess their positions on the Wholist?Analytic and Verbal?Imagery style dimensions. The pupil records of the special school pupils who were at the extreme of the style dimensions were also examined. When their style characteristics were contrasted with a Comparison Sample of 413 12?16?year?old males attending 10 secondary schools, the special school pupils had a significantly higher proportion of both Wholists and Verbalisers, than the Comparison Group. Further, the inspection of the records indicated that the types of social behaviour and behaviour problems exhibited varied with style, and particularly on the Wholist?Analytic dimension. The results were considered to have implications for the origins and treatment of problem behaviour. (shrink)

The paper considers aberrant behaviour in the context of cognitive style with reference to both diagnosis and treatment.The aims of the study were to investigate whether the style of pupils with behaviour problems was different from that of children with no reported problems, and also to consider how pupils of different style manifested their problem behaviours.The sample comprised 83 male pupils aged 10‐18 years from two residential special schools.The sample were given the Cognitive Styles Analysis (...) to assess their positions on the Wholist‐Analytic and Verbal‐Imagery style dimensions. The pupil records of the special school pupils who were at the extreme of the style dimensions were also examined.When their style characteristics were contrasted with a Comparison Sample of 413 12‐16‐year‐old males attending 10 secondary schools, the special school pupils had a significantly higher proportion of both Wholists and Verbalisers, than the Comparison Group. Further, the inspection of the records indicated that the types of social behaviour and behaviour problems exhibited varied with style, and particularly on the Wholist‐Analytic dimension.The results were considered to have implications for the origins and treatment of problem behaviour. (shrink)

Recent studies claim that having an analytical cognitive style is correlated with reduced religiosity in western populations. However, in cultural contexts where social norms constrain behavior, such cognitive characteristics may have reduced influence on behaviors and beliefs. We labeled this the ‘constraining environments hypothesis.’ In a sample of 246 Muslims in Turkey, the hypothesis was supported for gender. Females face social pressure to be religious. Unlike their male counterparts, they were more religious, less analytical, and their analytical (...) scores were uncorrelated with religiosity. We had predicted an analogous effect for the comparison between monolingual and bilingual students, since English-proficient students are exposed to a wider social environment. The bilingual students were less religious than the monolingual students, yet they were also less analytical. Thus, being analytical was not the path to lower religiosity for the bilingual students. Cognitive styles need to be studied along with social norms in a variety of cultures, to understand religion-cognition relationships. (shrink)

Males are often found to outperform females in tests of mathematics achievement and it has been proposed that this may in part be explained by differences in cognitive style. This study investigated the relation between Wholistic-Analytic and Verbal-Imagery cognitive style, gender and mathematics achievement in a sample of 190 Australian primary school students aged between 8?11?years (M?=?9.77, SD?=?1.05). It was hypothesised that males would outperform females in mathematics achievement tests, and that gender would interact with (...) cognitive style on mathematics performance. A significant gender/cognitive style interaction was found. Boys with an Analytic/Imagery style achieved significantly higher results than the girls with an Analytic/Imagery style, supporting the contention that certain cognitive styles affect boys and girls mathematics performance differently. Implications of results and strategies for improving mathematics achievement among girls are discussed. (shrink)

A group of 71 university students were first asked to explain 3 conceptual metaphors. Then the participants' cognitive styles were classified into "analytic" or "holistic" and "imager" or "verbalizer" by means of the Riding (1991) computer-assisted test of cognitive styles. The results of the experiment revealed cognitive style variables in participants' preferred strategies to explain the metaphors: (a) "holistic thinkers" were more likely than "analytic" ones to blend their conception of the target domain with (...) the source domain, and (b) "imagers" were more likely than "verbalizers" to refer to stereotypical images to explain the metaphors. (shrink)

Summary The positions of 129 14 to 19?year?old students on two fundamental cognitive styles dimensions (Wholist?Analytic and Verbal?Imagery) were assessed. They then received, by random allocation, one of three versions of a computer?presented instruction package on home hot water systems. The versions differed in terms of their structure (large versus small step), advance organiser (absent or present), verbal emphasis (high versus low), and diagram type (abstract versus pictorial). Version 1 had large step, no organiser, high verbal content, and (...) abstract diagram. Version 2 had small step, no organiser, low verbal content, and pictorial diagram. Version 3 was identical to Version 2, except that an organiser in the form of an elaborated introduction was given in which all five topics were introduced and each section began with an overview and ended with a summary. There was a significant interaction between version and cognitive style in their effect on recall. The results were discussed in terms of their implications for instruction. (shrink)

Introduction and the aim of the study. The paper analyzes the place and role of morphogenetic theory within a framework of contemporary socialtheoretical discourse. M. Archer’s morphogenetic theory and P. Donati’s relational conception are considered as two examples of this discourse. Methods. The authors use analytical methods (analysis, synthesis, etc.), applied in contemporary philosophy of social sciences. Scientific novelty. The key idea of the paper is analyzing morphogenetic social theory in terms of analytical scholasticism as a deviant way of contemporary (...) social theory development. Results. Morphogenetic theory is rather a sociological theory than interdisciplinary social theory; the sophisticated language of “morphogenists” mat seem difficult for other scholars to understand; morphogenetic theory demonstrates indefinite perspectives concerning interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary discourse in the context of contemporary stage of social-humanitarian knowledge development. Conclusions. The status of “morphogenetic theory” among other directions of social theory is by far “peripheral”. (shrink)

The authors find East Asians to be holistic, attending to the entire field and assigning causality to it, making relatively little use of categories and formal logic, and relying on "dialectical" reasoning, whereas Westerners, are more analytic, paying attention primarily to the object and the categories to which it belongs and using rules, including formal logic, to understand its behavior. The 2 types of cognitive processes are embedded in different naive metaphysical systems and tacit epistemologies. The authors speculate (...) that the origin of these differences is traceable to markedly different social systems. The theory and the evidence presented call into question long-held assumptions about basic cognitive processes and even about the appropriateness of the process–content distinction. (shrink)

The replicability and importance of the correlation between cognitive style and religious belief have been debated. Moreover, the literature has not examined distinct psychological accounts of this relationship. We tested the replicability of the correlation (N = 5284; students and broader samples of Canadians, Americans, and Indians); while testing three accounts of how cognitive style comes to be related to belief in God, karma, witchcraft, and to the belief that religion is necessary for morality. The first, (...) the dual process model, posits that analytical thinking is recruited in overriding intuitions related to supernatural beliefs. The second, the expressive rationality model, posits that analytical thinking is recruited in supporting already-held beliefs in an identity-protective manner. And the third, the counter-normativity rationality model, posits that analytical thinking is recruited to question beliefs supported by prevailing cultural norms. In Study 2, we tested the replicability of our results in a re-analysis of published data. The association between analytic thinking style and beliefs was replicated. We conclude that whereas the counter-normativity rationality model was contradicted by the data, both the dual process and expressive rationality models received varying degrees of empirical support, but neither model fully accounted for all the patterns in the data. (shrink)

Russians and Westerners access, process and communicate information in different ways. Whilst Westerners favour detailed analysis of subject matter, Russians tend to focus on certain components that are, in their view, significant. This disparity makes it difficult to achieve constructive dialogues between Western and Russian stakeholders contributing to cross-cultural communication problems. The author claims that the difference in the ways Russians and Westerners negotiate information is a significant cultural difference between Russia and West rather than an irritating (and in principle (...) amenable) lack of analytical skills on the Russian partners’ part. Understanding the reasons behind the Russian-specific approaches to dealing with information would be a positive step towards a more effective cross-cultural communication, important in business situations and essential in diplomacy. (shrink)

Research on the reasons for vaccine hesitancy has largely focused on factors directly related to vaccines. In contrast, the present study focused on cognitive factors that are not conceptually related to vaccines but that have been linked to other epistemically suspect beliefs such as conspiracy theories and belief in fake news. This survey was conducted before the Covid-19 pandemic (N = 356). The results showed that anti-vaccination attitudes decreased slightly with cognitive abilities and analytic thinking styles, and (...) strongly with scientific literacy. In addition, anti-vaccination attitudes increased slightly with teleological bias and strongly with an intuitive thinking style, ontological biases, and religious and paranormal beliefs. The results suggest that the same cognitive mechanisms that predispose to other epistemically suspect beliefs may predispose to anti-vaccination attitudes as well. The findings also indicate that pro-vaccination communication should focus on early prevention and that interventions against vaccine hesitancy should strive to be intuitively appealing. (shrink)

While individual differences in the willingness and ability to engage analytic processing have long informed research in reasoning and decision making, the implications of such differences have not yet had a strong influence in other domains of psychological research. We claim that analytic thinking is not limited to problems that have a normative basis and, as an extension of this, predict that individual differences in analytic thinking will be influential in determining beliefs and values. Along with assessments (...) of cognitive ability and style, religious beliefs, and moral values, participants judged the wrongness of acts considered disgusting and conventionally immoral, but that do not violate care- or fairness-based moral principles. Differences in willingness to engage analytic thinking predicted reduced judgements of wrongness, independent of demographics, political ideology, religiosity, and moral values. Further, we show that those who were higher in cognitive ability were less likely to indicate that purity, patriotism, and respect for traditions and authority are important to their moral thinking. These findings are consistent with a “Reflectionist” view that assumes a role for analytic thought in determining substantive, deeply-held human beliefs and values. (shrink)

Theories of reference have been central to analytic philosophy, and two views, the descriptivist view of reference and the causal-historical view of reference, have dominated the field. In this research tradition, theories of reference are assessed by consulting one’s intuitions about the reference of terms in hypothetical situations. However, recent work in cultural psychology (e.g., Nisbett et al. 2001) has shown systematic cognitive differences between East Asians and Westerners, and some work indicates that this extends to intuitions about (...) philosophical cases (Weinberg et al. 2001). In light of these findings on cultural differences, two experiments were conducted which explored intuitions about reference in Westerners and East Asians. Both experiments indicate that, for certain central cases, Westerners are more likely than East Asians to report intuitions that are consistent with the causal-historical view. These results constitute prima facie evidence that semantic intuitions vary from culture to culture, and the paper argues that this fact raises questions about the nature of the philosophical enterprise of developing a theory of reference. (shrink)

Works of literature represent stories, characters, and events: these are the contents of a work. Often, the contents of literary works are fictional; however, it is just as characteristic of works of literature that these contents are narrated in a distinct style of writing, in an author’s distinct literary “voice.” In this paper, I consider whether works of literature might represent something over and above their fictional contents in virtue of their style alone and what consequences this might (...) have for our thinking about aesthetic education. Both of these concerns—with what works of art represent and what kind of knowledge they make available to us—have been central to recent analytic philosophy of art. While I.. (shrink)

The paper explores the rift between continental and analytic style of doing philosophy, looking at the following main philosophical thesis that arguably characterize the continental turn, from Hegel to post-structuralists: first, the anthropological and historical is deeply ontological (Hegel, Heidegger). Second, the central element of human mind is a-rational, it is either will, desire or affect (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche). Third, the basic reality of the world is akin to this a-rational element of human mind (Nietzsche). Fourth, the cognitive (...) style, the language-style and the method of studying a given domain of philosopher investigates shouldfollow the language-style and the manner of domain itself. In particular, for a-rational domains, the cognitive style and the linguistic expression should minimize the use of traditional rationalist methods of enquiry and presentation in favor of more literary ones. Fifth, philosophy has reached its end, so that philosophers should abandon the traditional philosophical reflection in favor of participating in more concrete theoretical and political practices (Marx, poststructuralist “Theory”). Any future building of continentalanalytic bridges has to take into account the complexity of the rift, and the impact of the five theses on the contemporarycontinental thought. (shrink)

Visual stylometry is a new interdisciplinary research field that sits at the junction of digital humanities, empirical aesthetics, and computer science. Research in this field employs image analysis algorithms to study key aspects of artistic style. The nature of artistic style is the subject of ongoing debate within art history and philosophy of art. Computational and statistical methods in visual stylometry allow researchers to quantify and compare aspects of artistic style over the course of the career of (...) an individual artist, among artists who share in a common artistic style, and across different schools of art. The results of these studies provide clues to the image features that enable viewers to categorize works as belonging to different artistic styles. -/- We have developed a system that can act as an open access laboratory for visual stylometry. This approach is powerful enough to support advanced academic research in computer science, cognitive science, art history, and the philosophy of art while at the same time providing a user friendly interface accessible to students and researchers with little or no computer science background. Our framework is designed around the idea of scientific workflows. Scientific workflows allow users to build executable analyses in the same way they would draw a flowchart, by dragging objects representing data sets and image analysis procedures onto the work-space and drawing links between them. These workflows and data sets can be exported using open standards as web objects that can then be shared or modified by other users. -/- Our platform, Workflows for the Analysis of Images in Visual Stylometry (WAIVS), has the potential to promote computational literacy and data analytic skills among humanities students, to introduce science students to research in art and the humanities, to explore the nature of artistic style and its role in our understanding of artwork, and to help researchers in cognitive science understand how viewers perceptually categorize, recognize, and otherwise engage with artworks. (shrink)

Individual differences in the mere willingness to think analytically has been shown to predict religious disbelief. Recently, however, it has been argued that analytic thinkers are not actually less religious; rather, the putative association may be a result of religiosity typically being measured after analytic thinking (an order effect). In light of this possibility, we report four studies in which a negative correlation between religious belief and performance on analytic thinking measures is found when religious belief is (...) measured in a separate session. We also performed a meta-analysis on all previously published studies on the topic along with our four new studies (N = 15,078, k = 31), focusing specifically on the association between performance on the Cognitive Reflection Test (the most widely used individual difference measure of analytic thinking) and religious belief. This meta-analysis revealed an overall negative correlation (r) of -.18, 95% CI [-.21, -.16]. Although this correlation is modest, self-identified atheists (N = 133) scored 18.7% higher than religiously affiliated individuals (N = 597) on a composite measure of analytic thinking administered across our four new studies (d = .72). Our results indicate that the association between analytic thinking and religious disbelief is not caused by a simple order effect. There is good evidence that atheists and agnostics are more reflective than religious believers. (shrink)

Two studies explored individual differences in appraisal of minor, potentially stressful events. Previous research on appraisal has focused on one or two appraisal dimensions within specific situations rather than on the full range of appraisals or on the stability of appraisal across situations. Goals of the present studies were: (1) to explore stability of individual differences in appraisal across situations; (2) to identify individual differences in general appraisal styles; and (3) to examine how appraisal styles are related to personality constructs. (...) Appraisal was moderately stable across situations and individual differences in appraisal style were related to relevant personality constructs. Primary threat appraisals and secondary appraisals of blame and manageability emerged as particularly important in distinguishing the appraisal styles. Implications of the results for the development of psychopathology are considered. (shrink)

Theories of affective influences on cognition posit that negative mood may increase cognitive load, causing a decrement in task performance (Seibert & Ellis, [1991]. Irrelevant thoughts, emotional mood states, and cognitive task performance. Memory & Cognition, 19(5), 507–513), or cause a shift to more analytic thinking, which benefits tasks requiring attention to detail (Schwarz & Clore, [1983]. Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(3), 513–523). (...) We previously reported that individuals who are higher in the trait of emotional reactivity performed better on an inhibitory task with increasing negative mood whereas low-reactive individuals showed the converse pattern (Gabel & McAuley, [2018]. Does mood help or hinder executive functions? Reactivity may be the key. Personality and Individual Differences, 128, 94–99; [2020]. React to act: Negative mood, response inhibition, and the moderating role of emotional reactivity. Motivation and Emotion, 44(6), 862–869). Because high-reactive individuals are more accustomed to negative affect (Nock et al., [2008]. The emotion reactivity scale: Development, evaluation, and relation to self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. Behavior Therapy, 39(2), 107–116), we speculated that negative mood engendered analytic thinking but without a task-incongruent increase in cognitive load – thereby facilitating performance. Here, we induced a heuristic or analytic approach to information processing prior to performance of an inhibitory task and expected different results pending the thinking style induced. In the heuristic condition, increasing negative mood was associated with better performance for high-reactive participants but not their low-reactive counterparts. In the analytic condition, increasing negative mood was associated with better performance irrespective of emotional reactivity. Our results are consistent with the notion that negative mood engenders analytic thinking which may benefit response inhibition provided it does not increase task-incongruent cognitive load. (shrink)

Adolescents, as active online searchers, have easy access to health information. Much health information they encounter online is of poor quality and even contains potentially harmful health information. The ability to identify the quality of health messages disseminated via online technologies is needed in terms of health attitudes and behaviors. This study aims to understand how different ways of editing health-related messages affect their credibility among adolescents and what impact this may have on the content or format of health information. (...) The sample consisted of 300 secondary school students. To examine the effects of manipulating editorial elements, we used seven short messages about the health-promoting effects of different fruits and vegetables. Participants were then asked to rate the message’s trustworthiness with a single question. We calculated second-order variable sensitivity as the derivative of the trustworthiness of a fake message from the trustworthiness of a true neutral message. We also controlled for participants’ scientific reasoning, cognitive reflection, and media literacy. Adolescents were able to distinguish overtly fake health messages from true health messages. True messages with and without editorial elements were perceived as equally trustworthy, except for news with clickbait headlines, which were less trustworthy than other true messages. The results were also the same when scientific reasoning, analytical reasoning, and media literacy were considered. Adolescents should be well trained to recognize online health messages with editorial elements characteristic of low-quality content. They should also be trained on how to evaluate these messages. (shrink)

This study aimed to see if context in the form of priming can alter a participants thinking style based on their level of implicit association with either a religious or paranormal belief. This was based on the theory of alief, when a person’s explicit belief and behaviour are mismatched. This was also linked to dual process theory, with alief being analogous to type one thinking styles (fast and automatic). One hundred and seventy-two participants were recruited from the University of (...) Derby and social media. Implicit association was measured using a modified Brief Implicit Association Test that looked at paranormal and religious belief. Explicit supernatural belief, cognitive reflection, metacognition, and confidence were also measured. A hierarchical multiple regression revealed that a lower belief in the supernatural (apart from psychokinesis), a religious prime and high confidence predicted reflective thinking. Common paranormal perceptions, religious prime and confidence were significant predictors in the model. It was concluded that the prime worked on a moral level and influenced someone with an already open mind to different beliefs to be more analytical, positive, and confident. This study does not support the theory of alief, however, it indicates certain beliefs are susceptible to a certain prime, and that a person can be influenced to be more analytical. (shrink)

(1992). Cognitive Style, Gender, Attitude toward Computer‐assisted Learning and Academic Achievement. Educational Studies: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 151-160.

The purpose of the study was to compare the visuospatial decision-making error scores related to the perception of biological motion of individuals categorized as field dependent or field independent. A sample of 69 participants aged 18-27 years that included 33 males and 36 females completed the experiment. Cognitive style was assessed using the Group Embedded Figure Test. Perception of biological motion was evaluated using two different point-light stimuli developed from video images of a ballet dancer’s performance of a (...) correct and incorrect turn in the fifth position. The results showed that individuals classified as field independent made significantly fewer visuospatial processing errors. The findings are considered and discussed in relation to theoretical perspectives associated with both cognitive processing and cognitive style. (shrink)

In his pioneering sociological theory, which makes phenomenological concepts fruitful for the social sciences, Alfred Schütz has laid foundations for a characterization of an manifold of distinct domains of experience. My aim here is to further develop this pluralist theory of experience by buttressing and extending the elements of diversity that it includes, and by eliminating or minimizing lingering imbalances among the domains of experience. After a critical discussion of the criterion-catalogue Schütz develops for the purpose of characterizing different (...) class='Hi'>cognitive styles, I move on to examine its application to one special style, the lifeworld. I appeal, on the one hand, to Husserl's characterization of the lifeworld as a world of perception, and on the other hand to the layer-model of the lifeworld developed by Schütz and Thomas Luckmann. A consequence of this approach is that the lifeworld appears as a socially definable context that is detached from other experiences but on an equal footing with them with respect to their claim of validity. The term "lifeworld" does not denote a category that encompasses culture or nature but refers to a delimited action-space. Finally, I draw upon Schütz' s criterion-catalogue to characterize two domains of experience outside of the lifeworld, which play a central role for the process of differentiation of experience in modernity and for the phenomenological analysis of types of experience: experimental science and subjectivity. (shrink)

Alvin Goldman's recent collection (Goldman, 1992) includes many of the important and seminal contributions made by him over the last three decades to epistemology, philosophy of mind, and analytic metaphysics. Goldman is an acknowledged leader in efforts to put material from cognitive and social science to good philosophical use. This is the “liaison” which Goldman takes his own work to exemplify and advance. Yet the essays contained in Liaisons chart an important evolution in Goldman's own views about the (...) relation between philosophy and empirical inquiry. Goldman raises, if only unwittingly, the question of what philosophy per se contributes to the encounter. The way in which Goldman's work problematizes the claim that philosophy forms a working liaison with the cognitive and social sciences is revealed by examining two sets of distinctions prominent in Goldman's analyses in this volume. I trace how each pair of terms—philosophy versus science, individual versus social—is used by Goldman and suggest that it is less clear than one would like how these key notions are or could be distinguished from one another. Doubts about these distinctions, at least as Goldman employs them, suggest more general concerns regarding Goldman's style of naturalism and the status of philosophy as a source of knowledge. Liaisons: philosophy meets the cognitive and social sciences , A. Goldman. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that cognitive style impacts several areas of human behavior of interest to marketers. This article reports the results of an exploratory study testing the proposition that cognitive style can influence one's perceptions of what is and is not a matter of ethics. The findings indicate that cognitive style can play a role in one's perceptions of ethics, and may help further our understanding of the factors that bear on ethical points (...) of view. (shrink)

The susceptibility of decision-makers’ choices to variations in option framing has been attributed to individual differences in cognitive style. According to this view, individuals who are prone to a more deliberate, or less intuitive, thinking style are less susceptible to framing manipulations. Research findings on the topic, however, have tended to yield small effects, with several studies also being limited in inferential value by methodological drawbacks. We report two experiments that examined the value of several cognitive- (...) class='Hi'>style variables, including measures of cognitive reflection, subjective numeracy, actively open-minded thinking, need for cognition, and hemispheric dominance, in predicting participants’ frame-consistent choices. Our experiments used an isomorph of the Asian Disease Problem and we manipulated frames between participants. We controlled for participants’ sex and age, and we manipulated the order in which choice options were presented to participants. In Experiment 1 (N = 190) using an undergraduate sample and in Experiment 2 (N = 316) using a sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, we found no significant effect of any of the cognitive style measures taken on predicting frame-consistent choice, regardless of whether we analyzed participants’ binary choices or their choices weighted by the extent to which participants preferred their chosen option over the non-chosen option. The sole factor that significantly predicted frame consistent choice was framing: in both experiments, participants were more likely to make frame consistent choices when the frame was positive than when it was negative, consistent with the tendency towards risk aversion in the task. The present findings do not support the view that individual differences in people’s susceptibility to framing manipulations can be substantially accounted for by individual differences in cognitive style. (shrink)

This paper assessed whether belief in conspiracy theories was associated with a particularly cognitive style (worldview). The sample comprised 223 volunteers recruited via convenience sampling and included undergraduates, postgraduates, university employees and alumni. Respondents completed measures assessing a range of cognitive-perceptual factors (schizotypy, delusional ideation and hallucination proneness) and conspiratorial beliefs (general attitudes towards conspiracist thinking and endorsement of individual conspiracies). Positive symptoms of schizotypy, particularly the cognitive-perceptual factor, correlated positively with conspiracist beliefs. The best predictor (...) of belief in conspiracies was delusional ideation. Consistent with the notion of a coherent conspiratorial mindset, scores across conspiracy measures correlated strongly. Whilst findings supported the view that belief in conspiracies, within the sub-clinical population, was associated with a delusional thinking style, cognitive-perceptual factors in combination accounted for only 32% of the variance. (shrink)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between cognitive styles of managers working in tourism companies and dynamic capabilities of these companies. Design – The research relies on a quantitative questionnaire. Methodology – To answer the research question, the bivariate (Pearson) correlation was applied. A number of 268 answers from people working in tourism were received. Findings – We found a positive correlation between different dimensions of dynamic capabilities of tourism companies. These capabilities are (...) influenced by managers’ cognitive characteristics. The organizational culture plays a mediating role in the latter relationship. Implications for theory – The paper offers an alternative understanding of dynamic capabilities in tourism and hospitality; the paper also opens new paths for academic research on the impact of cognitive characteristics of managers on the dynamic capabilities of tourism companies. Implications for practitioners – Making accurate psychological portrait of the candidate can predict his/her behavior in certain situation, such as response towards environmental change using dynamic capabilities and when making the necessary changes to the organizational culture. Originality – This study proposes model of influence of a manager’s cognitive style on dynamic capabilities, whereby organizational culture moderates this relationship. (shrink)

This report outlines the findings from a Delphi study designed to establish consensus on the definitions of cognitive style and learning style amongst an international style researcher community. The study yields long-needed definitions for each construct that reflect high levels of agreement. In a field that has been criticised for a bewildering array of definitions and a proliferation of terms and concepts, this study represents an important step to address confusion in the meaning of the two (...) terms. New researchers interested in styles are encouraged to draw on these definitions when developing new research agendas aimed at deepening our understanding of style as a core construct in educational psychology. (shrink)

Organizations are increasingly looking for ways to reap the benefits of cognitive diversity for problem solving. A major unanswered question concerns the implications of cognitive diversity for longer-term outcomes such as team learning, with its broader effects on organizational learning and productivity. We study how cognitive style diversity in teams—or diversity in the way that team members encode, organize and process information—indirectly influences team learning through collective intelligence, or the general ability of a team to work (...) together across a wide array of tasks. Synthesizing several perspectives, we predict and find that cognitive style diversity has a curvilinear—inverted U-shaped—relationship with collective intelligence. Collective intelligence is further positively related to the rate at which teams learn, and is a mechanism guiding the indirect relationship between cognitive style diversity and team learning. We test the predictions in 98 teams using ten rounds of the minimum-effort tacit coordination game. Overall, this research advances our understanding of the implications of cognitive diversity for organizations and why some teams demonstrate high levels of team learning in dynamic situations while others do not. (shrink)

Two hundred and five 14-16 year olds from two Anglophone Canadian schools were given the Canadian Test of Cognitive Skills and the Cognitive Styles Analysis and their grade 9 scores in the subjects of French, English, mathematics, geography and science were obtained. The study first looked at the relationship between cognitive skills and cognitive style. The correlation between cognitive skills and cognitive style approached zero suggesting their independence. Having confirmed the independence of (...) cognitive skills and cognitive style, their interactive effect, including gender, on subject performance was investigated by means of analysis of variance. There was a significant interaction between sex and subject; females were superior to males in all five subjects, but particularly so in French and English. There was also a significant interaction between skill, style and subject in their effect on performance. This was discussed in terms of the role of style in learning and the effect of skill/intelligence on strategy development. (shrink)

The present study explored several dispositional factors associated with individual differences in lay adult’s interpretation of when an arguer is, or is not, committed to a statement. College students were presented with several two-person arguments in which the proponent of a thesis conceded a key point in the last turn. Participants were then asked to indicate the extent to which that concession implied a change in the proponent’s attitude toward any of the previous statements in the argument. Participants designated as (...) ‘liberal’ used the concession to infer substantial change in commitment to earlier statements in the argument. A group designated as ‘conservative’ were reluctant to make any such inferences. A discriminant analysis indicated that variables assessing participants’ attitudes toward argument as well as their cognitive and communication styles jointly predicted their liberal or conservative status. The discriminant function and follow-up group comparisons indicated that liberals were more likely than conservatives to engage in argument. This included a greater tendency to use argument as a source of knowledge. Liberals also employed a more sophisticated message design logic than conservatives on a communication task. The groups did not clearly differ with respect to participants’ implicit theory of argument, though trends were present that merit attention in future research. Implications of these findings for future research on lay interpretations of commitment are discussed. (shrink)

Using survey data collected from chief executives of nonprofit organizations and financial performance information, the current study examined the influence of the individual chief executive characteristics on their perception of organization performance. The study found that executives with internal Locus of Control, high collectivism values, and analytical decision styles have greater convergence between their perceptions of performance and a financial measure. The study findings also offer support for existing theories that suggest executive cognitions play a significant role in filtering information, (...) ultimately influencing the accuracy of perceptions and the effectiveness of strategic choices. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Cognition as Information Processing, as Computation, and as Abiding in the Meaningful Operationalism Is This Merely a Terminological Issue? Conclusion.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to clarify how IT managers' decision styles affect their evaluation of information technology. Design/methodology/approach – Four different decision styles were assessed in a leadership test directed towards IT managers. Each style included two dimensions: confidence judgment ability and decision heuristic usage. Participants belonging to each style were interviewed and their answers analysed with regard to their reasoning about central areas of IT management. Findings – Results suggest that a decision (...) class='Hi'>style combining intuitive and analytical capabilities lead to better evaluations of information technology. Originality/value – The results of the present study are valuable for the understanding of how decision styles impact on IT management in everyday life. (shrink)

The disposition effect refers to the tendency of investors to sell winners too early and hold on to losers too long, which is one of the most documented and robust decision biases. However, few studies have looked beyond demographic and social factors on the disposition effect. The current study investigated the association between financial self-efficacy (one’s belief about their personal capability in ultimate financial goals achieving), versatile cognitive style (an individual’s capability in deploying the experiential or rational mode (...) in ways that are contextually appropriate), and the disposition effect. A total of 285 employees from finance-related business completed anonymous questionnaires regarding financial self-efficacy, rational-experiential inventory, and the disposition effect. Our findings revealed that financial self-efficacy was significantly and positively associated with versatile cognitive style and the disposition effect. Further, versatile cognitive style partially mediated the relationship between financial self-efficacy and the disposition effect. Our findings provide valuable guidance for individual investors to make financial decisions based on their characteristics. (shrink)