Reconceptualizing Metacognitive Experience in Dual-Process Reasoning: The Role of Emotion in Triggering Deliberation

Abstract

Human thinking has long been posited to involve two different cognitive processes, also known as intuition and deliberation. While deliberation is effortful and cognitively costly, intuition is effortless. A central issue for reasoning theories is to account for the trigger of deliberation. Compelling theories explain the trigger of deliberative processes by the existence of a metacognitive experience. A feeling of rightness, of error, or of uncertainty would accompany our intuitions and, depending on their strength, triggers the need to use deliberation. Despite the emotional component that can be assumed in these metacognitive phenomena, and a whole literature linking emotion to cognition, these models do not fully embrace the emotional nature of these experiences, both empirically and theoretically. We believe that the psychology of reasoning, and particularly dual-process theories, would benefit from fully accepting this emotional dimension of reasoning.