Assessing Fluid Rationality and Its Relations to Cognitive Styles

Abstract

A new tri-partite model of rational thinking (Stanovich, 2011) allows for assessing various aspects of rational decision making. Because of assumed multi-faceted nature of rationality, it is necessary to establish which measuring paradigms are best suited to assess it. 531 participants (31% men,), with mean age of 27.61 (SD=7.8) took part in the present study. We examined relationships between several testing paradigms from JDM literature, such as the jelly bean task (Kirkpatrik, Epstein, 1992), cognitive reflection test (Frederick, 2005) and Wason´s selection task. Higher scores in these testing paradigms are hypothesized to constitute a resistance to miserly processing. We also examined two other dimensions of fluid rationality: temporal discounting of the reward and acceptance of risk (Frederick, 2005), and several measures of cognitive style containing a preference for intuition or deliberation (PID, REI, CoSi, MBTI). The lack of strong mutual relationships between these measures, together with low internal consistency for a composite score of resistance to miserly processing, rather undermined the construct of miserly processing. There were also very weak relationships with other constructs hypothesized to be other dimensions of fluid rationality besides resistance to miserly processing. Such results seem to support Stanovich's (2011) hypothesis about multifactorial fluid rationality.

Keywords: rationality, resistance to miserly processing, cognitive styles, intuition

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100185