Bias detection: Response confidence evidence for conflict sensitivity in the ratio bias task

Abstract

Human reasoning is often biased by heuristic thinking. A key question is whether people detect that their heuristic answer conflicts with logical considerations. Empirical studies suggest that the detection is typically successful but the generality of these findings has been questioned. The present study focuses on this issue. A response confidence measure was used to validate conflict sensitivity findings in the classical ratio bias task and identify individual differences in conflict detection efficiency. Participants were asked to indicate how confident they were after solving problems for which a cued heuristic response could be inconsistent or consistent with the correct response. Results confirmed that most reasoners showed a confidence decrease when they were biased, suggesting that they acknowledge that their intuitive answers are not fully warranted. However, there were also subgroups of reasoners who failed to show a confidence effect. Implications for the debate on conflict detection during thinking are discussed.

Keywords:

• Conflict detection
• Heuristics
• Ratio bias
• Reasoning
• Response confidence

The authors would like to thank all the individuals who participated in this study.

The authors would like to thank all the individuals who participated in this study.

Notes

¹ For clarity, we will be using the label “correct” or “logical” response as a handy shortcut to refer to “the response that has traditionally been considered as correct or normative according to standard logic or probability theory”. The appropriateness of these traditional norms has sometimes been questioned in the reasoning field (see Stanovich & West, 2000, for a review). Under this interpretation, the heuristic response should not be labelled as “incorrect” or “biased”. For the sake of simplicity we stick to the traditional labelling.