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. 【小题1】 Psychologists call this way of thinking a cognitive bias (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. 【小题2】 In a quiz about US civics, they overestimated the chance that their answers were right much 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, spontaneously and without effort, and controlled system including conscious and effortful reasoning. Jumpers and non-jumpers are equally influenced by automatic thoughts. 【小题3】 It is the controlled system that helps people avoid mental biases introduced by the automatic system. As a result, jumpers were more likely to accept the conclusions made at first blush without further questioning. A lack of controlled thinking is also more broadly connected to their problematic beliefs and faulty reasoning.

【小题4】 A method called metacognitive training can be used to target their biases, which can help people think more deliberatively. In this training, participants are confronted with their own biases. They can learn about the missteps and other ways of thinking through the problem at hand. It helps to chip away at participants’ overconfidence.

In everyday life, the question of whether we should think things through or instead go with our guts is a frequent and important one. 【小题5】 Sometimes the most important decision we make can be to take some more time before making a choice.