[LINK] Breaking the illusion of understanding
This writeup at Ars Technica about a recently published paper in the Journal of Consumer Research may be of interest. Super-brief summary:
Consumers with higher scores on a cognitive reflection test are more inclined to buy products when told more about them; for consumers with lower CRT scores it’s the reverse.
Consumers with higher CRT scores felt that they understood the products better after being told more; consumers with lower CRT scores felt that they understood them worse.
If subjects are asked to give an explanation of how products work and then asked how well they understand and how willing they’d be to pay, high-CR subjects don’t change much in either but low-CR subjects report feeling that they understand worse and that they’re willing to pay less.
Conclusion: it looks as if when you give low-CR subjects more information about a product, they feel they understand it less, don’t like that feeling, and become less willing to pay.
If this is right (which seems plausible enough) then it presumably applies more broadly: e.g., to what tactics are most effective in political debate. Though it’s hardly news in that area that making people feel stupid isn’t the best way to persuade them of things.
Abstract of the paper:
People differ in their threshold for satisfactory causal understanding and therefore in the type of explanation that will engender understanding and maximize the appeal of a novel product. Explanation fiends are dissatisfied with surface understanding and desire detailed mechanistic explanations of how products work. In contrast, explanation foes derive less understanding from detailed than coarse explanations and downgrade products that are explained in detail. Consumers’ attitude toward explanation is predicted by their tendency to deliberate, as measured by the cognitive reflection test. Cognitive reflection also predicts susceptibility to the illusion of explanatory depth, the unjustified belief that one understands how things work. When explanation foes attempt to explain, it exposes the illusion, which leads to a decrease in willingness to pay. In contrast, explanation fiends are willing to pay more after generating explanations. We hypothesize that those low in cognitive reflection are explanation foes because explanatory detail shatters their illusion of understanding.
PDF.
In real life, one should be careful in categorizing people who don’t actively seek information/explanations before a purchase/decision as people who are low cognitive-reflectors.
I know of people who I think might score very high on the Cognitive Reflection test, but would not actively seek information for many small to medium size purchases/decisions (such as ordering food, buying a phone, deciding a driving route) because they would like to conserve their attention and resources to reflect on other aspects of their cognition, such as their work or art.
I’ve also found I’m much happier with my choices when I don’t compare them to might-have-beens. This is much easier to do if I don’t even bother to become aware of the alternatives (for instance, ordering the first menu item that seems likely to be satisfying). It reduces my wistfulness for what might have been :)