Interbane, that is a great question, and the answer is: Yes, there is a good deal of research (primarily from neuroimaging studies) showing separate processing pathways for System 1 and System 2. For example, Knutson and colleagues conducted an fMRI experiment in which both reward magnitude and prob...

Interbane, for the past 30 years, Kahneman has published papers showing that human decision-making is fraught with biases and misleading heuristics.

I confess I didn't read his book. But with respect to automatic processing: Expertise development relies heavily on shifting knowledge from controlled to automatic processing. Simple example: Learning to drive a car. Initially, you had to think about each component (e.g., check rear view mirror, che...

Minor correction: The author of Rationality and the Reflective Mind is Keith Stanovich, not Stankovich. For those who are interested, Kahneman didn't introduce the theoretical concept of two systems in higher cognition. Others had proposed and tested versions of dual system theories prior to him, wh...

Interbane, yeah, I just heard from Chris about the names referring to the number of times a person has posted. I didn't feel I was being demeaned, just misrepresented! The ironic thing is that my daughter really is a creative writing student in an MFA program. She got a kick out of hearing that I wa...

By the way, my profile still says "creative writing student". Anyone have any idea how to change that? My user profile has accurate information, and I don't know where this "creative writing student" label is coming from. Thanks.

Penelope, your husband's experience is called insight. I have a section on that in my book Good Thinking. In it, I describe the many scientific and other discoveries that were the outcomes of insight, and explain our current understanding of how the insight process works. With respect to the proper ...

Robert, I found myself wondering why your posts seem to be "corrections" to my content, I believe it might be due to the fact that (I just noticed) my mini-profile beside my comments states that I am a creative writing student. In fact, I hold a PhD in experimental psychology, am the autho...

The term "rational" has different meanings in different disciplines. In economics, a rational agent is someone who is self-interested, that is, chooses what is most likely to bring what one most wants. (According to rational choice theory, you make rational decisions by determining how pro...

Robert, just to clarify further: In Joshua Greene's dual process of model of morality, two systems process the situation in parallel. System 1 is a rapid system that outputs judgments quickly based on emotion, heuristics, or intuition. System 2 is a slower system that outputs judgments more slowly b...