Feeling we're biased: autonomic arousal and reasoning conflict.
Human reasoning is often biased by intuitive beliefs. A key question is whether the bias results from a failure to detect that the intuitions conflict with logical considerations or from a failure to discard these tempting intuitions. The present study addressed this unresolved debate by focusing on conflict-related autonomic nervous system modulation during biased reasoning. Participants' skin conductance responses (SCRs) were monitored while they solved classic syllogisms in which a cued intuitive response could be inconsistent or consistent with the logical correct response. Results indicated that all reasoners showed increased SCRs when solving the inconsistent conflict problems. Experiment 2 validated that this autonomic arousal boost was absent when people were not engaged in an active reasoning task. The presence of a clear autonomic conflict response during reasoning lends credence to the idea that reasoners have a "gut" feeling that signals that their intuitive response is not logically warranted. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://cabn.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.
De Neys
Wim
W
CNRS and University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France. wim.deneys@univ-tlse2.fr
Moyens
Elke
E
Vansteenwegen
Debora
D
D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001341:Autonomic Nervous System / Q000502:physiology; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response; D006801:Humans; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time; D012879:Skin Physiological Phenomena; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*