How much time do you spend doing research before you make a decision? There are people who go over every detail exhaustively before making a choice. Psychologists call this way of thinking a cognitive bias (认知偏见), a tendency toward a specific mental mistake.
To study "jumping", we examined decision-making patterns among more than 600 people from the general population. We found that jumpers made more errors than non-jumpers on problems that require thoughtful analysis. In a quiz about US citizens, they overestimated the chance that their answers were right significantly more than other participants did — even when their answers were wrong.
So what is behind "jumping"? Psychological researchers commonly distinguish between two pathways of thought: automatic system, which reflects ideas that come to the mind easily and without effort, and controlled system including conscious and effortful reasoning. Jumpers and non-jumpers are equally influenced by automatic thoughts.
It is the controlled system that helps people counter balance mental biases introduced by the automatic system. As a result, jumpers were more likely to accept the conclusion made at first sight without further questioning. A lack of controlled thinking is also more broadly connected to their problematic beliefs and faulty reasoning.
A method called cognitive training can be used to target their biases, which can help people think more deliberatively. In this training, participants are faced with their own biases. They can learn about the missteps and other ways of thinking through the problem at hand. It helps to gradually get rid of participants' overconfidence.
In everyday life, the question of whether we should think things through or instead jump to a conclusion is a frequent and important one. Sometimes the most important decision we make can be to take some more time before making a choice.
A. Happily, there may be some hope for jumpers.
B. Also, jumpers had problems with overconfidence.
C. We plan to trace other problems introduced by jumping.
D. But a fair number of individuals are quick to jump to conclusions.
E. It is certainly possible for them to overthink things to take a decision.
F. The jumpers, however, did not engage in controlled reasoning to the same degree as non-jumpers.
G. Recent studies show that even gathering just a little bit more evidence may help us avoid a major mistake.
