ABSTRACT

T o navigate successfully through their environment, organisms must con-stantly solve problems, make judgments, and come to decisions. Everyday experience as well as scientic research suggests that people accomplish these tasks very differently: Sometimes insights, judgments, and decisions follow from elaborate, effortful thinking. At other occasions, however, people seem to come up with an insight or decision with little thinking by relying on judgmental shortcuts and gut feelings instead of a comprehensive analysis of the situation to come to a judgment. Many psychological theories approach this variability of judgment and decision making by distinguishing between discrete types of thinking such as analytic or intuitive thinking.