No easy fix for belief bias during syllogistic reasoning?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although erroneous intuitions often lead human thinking astray, recent studies suggest that single-shot interventions in which the underlying problem logic is clarified can easily remediate this bias. Because previous work typically focused on numerical problems, we tested here the generalizability to the infamous non-numerical belief bias during syllogistic reasoning. Unfortunately, results of 3 studies show that the effect is less clear. Although we succeeded in boosting performance for a minority of reasoners, reasoners who remained biased also tended to show a worse performance after training. We conclude that more work is needed to optimise the single-shot “easy fix” intervention approach to remediate belief bias during syllogistic reasoning.