Two Reasoning Mechanisms for Solving the Conditional ‘Fallacies'

There are two different reasoning mechanisms for solving ‘if-then’-problems: one is based on likelihood-estimates and is rather heuristic; the other one takes counterexamples into account and is analytic in nature. Based on the difference in input of the two reasoning mechanisms we found that the AC problem is mainly solved by using likelihood-information, whereas the DA problem is rather solved using counterexample-information. Mental models adepts have proposed some explanations to account for the differences in processing difficulty and speed between AC and DA. Considering the reasoning mechanism for AC and DA from a dual process perspective provides an extra explanation for the observed effects. This study indicates that framing observations in a dual process account can provide additional explanations for well-known phenomena.