Insight and self-insight in reasoning and decision making

Reasoning and decision making are major topics within the contemporary cognitive psychology of thinking (see Manktelow, 1999, for a recent readable review of these fields). Reasoning research involves studying the ways in which people make explicit inferences from information they are given. Decision research involves asking people to make choices or judgements. Although mostly pursued by different researchers, the two fields are closely connected and confront common issues. For example, in contrast with other areas of cognitive psychology these fields are marked by debate about human rationality. Normative systems for human thought are proposed – such as propositional logic or expected utility theory – and people judged as biased if they fail to conform with them. This has led to major arguments about whether bias implies irrationality (Evans & Over, 1996; Oaksford & Chater, 1998; Stanovich, 1999).