When thinking feels difficult: Metacognitive experiences in judgment and decision making

Professor Norbert Schwarz
Ph.D., University of Mannheim, Germany
Department of Psychology
University of Michigan

Abstract

Most models of judgment and decision making focus solely on what comes to mind, that is, on declarative information. However, thinking and deciding is accompanied by metacognitive experience of ease or difficulty and this experiential information can qualify the implications of thought content. Throughout, judgments and decisions are opposite to the implications of accessible declarative information when recall or thought generation is experienced as difficult. For example, people infer that an outcome is more likely, the more they think about reasons that argue against its occurrence; think that they are at lower risk, the more risk-increasing behaviors they recall; and are less likely to make a choice, the more reasons they generate for a choice. Similarly, new information is more likely to be accepted as true the easier it is to process – and an easy vs. difficult to read print font is sufficient to influence judgments of truth, estimates of social consensus, and actual choice. The observed influence of metacognitive experiences is eliminated when their informational value for the judgment at hand is called into question, e.g., through misattribution manipulations. Throughout, we cannot predict people's judgments without taking the interplay of declarative and experiential information into account.