TY - JOUR
T1 - Experts and laymen grossly underestimate the benefits of argumentation for reasoning
AU - Mercier, Hugo
AU - Trouche, Emmanuel
AU - Yama, Hiroshi
AU - Heintz, Christophe
AU - Girotto, Vittorio
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2015/7/3
Y1 - 2015/7/3
N2 - Many fields of study have shown that group discussion generally improves reasoning performance for a wide range of tasks. This article shows that most of the population, including specialists, does not expect group discussion to be as beneficial as it is. Six studies asked participants to solve a standard reasoning problem—the Wason selection task—and to estimate the performance of individuals working alone and in groups. We tested samples of U.S., Indian, and Japanese participants, European managers, and psychologists of reasoning. Every sample underestimated the improvement yielded by group discussion. They did so even after they had been explained the correct answer, or after they had had to solve the problem in groups. These mistaken intuitions could prevent individuals from making the best of institutions that rely on group discussion, from collaborative learning and work teams to deliberative assemblies.
AB - Many fields of study have shown that group discussion generally improves reasoning performance for a wide range of tasks. This article shows that most of the population, including specialists, does not expect group discussion to be as beneficial as it is. Six studies asked participants to solve a standard reasoning problem—the Wason selection task—and to estimate the performance of individuals working alone and in groups. We tested samples of U.S., Indian, and Japanese participants, European managers, and psychologists of reasoning. Every sample underestimated the improvement yielded by group discussion. They did so even after they had been explained the correct answer, or after they had had to solve the problem in groups. These mistaken intuitions could prevent individuals from making the best of institutions that rely on group discussion, from collaborative learning and work teams to deliberative assemblies.
KW - Argumentation
KW - Group problem solving
KW - Intuitions about argumentation
KW - Reasoning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84929277555&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13546783.2014.981582
DO - 10.1080/13546783.2014.981582
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84929277555
SN - 1354-6783
VL - 21
SP - 341
EP - 355
JO - Thinking and Reasoning
JF - Thinking and Reasoning
IS - 3
ER -