Alter et al. (2007)

Question 1

aim

Answer 1

to investigate whether decreasing the legibility of the font in a standard cognitive test would produce more accurate responses

Question 2

procedure

Answer 2

• 40 undergraduate students from Princeton University
• were asked to complete a standardized cognitive reflection test
• designed to measure a person’s tendency to override an incorrect “gut” response and engage in further reflection to find a correct answer
• randomly assigned to the ‘fluent’ or ‘disfluent’ condition
• ‘fluent’ condition completed a version of the CRT writte in font that is easy to read (black Myriad Web 12-point font)
• ‘disfluent’ condition completed a version of the CRT written in font that is hard to read (10% grey italicized Myriad Web 10-point font)
• DV was the number of errors made in the cognition test
  -disfluent font would require the participants to concentrate more to trigger S2 thinking which requires deeper processing than S1

Question 3

Results

Answer 3

• significantly higher degree of acuracy with the test done by the participants in the disfluent condition
• 65% of the praticipants in teh disfluent condition answered all of the questions correctly
• only 10% of those in the fluent condition did so

Question 4

Conclusion

Answer 4

-easier tasks require the less use of more rational S2 thinking and more use of the intuitive S1 thinking
- difficult tasks prompt the use of the more reasoned S2 thinking rather than the more heuristic S1 thinking