Psychologists Dr. Carmen Sanchez and Dr. David Dunning have found that hasty judgments are often just one part of larger error-prone patterns in behavior and thinking.
"These patterns have costs," they write. "People who tend to make such jumps in their reasoning often choose a bet in which they have low chances of winning instead of one where their chances are much better."
Sanchez and Dunning looked at how over 600 people make decisions. Since most research on this kind of bias comes from studies of schizophrenia (where jumping to conclusions is common), they used a thinking game from that area.
In the game, players watched someone fishing from one of two lakes: one lake had mostly red fish, the other mostly gray. The fisher caught one fish at a time, and players had to decide which lake it was. Some players waited to see many fish before deciding, while others—the jumpers—made their choice after only one or two.
"We also asked participants questions to learn more about their thought patterns," the researchers add. "We found that the fewer fish a player waited to see, the more errors that individual made in other types of beliefs, reasoning and decisions."
For example, the people who made decisions earlier were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, like the idea that the Apollo moon landings were faked. They were also more likely to believe in paranormal claims and medical myths, such as the idea that health officials are hiding a link between cell phones and cancer.
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Jumpers made more mistakes than nonjumpers on problems that need careful thinking. Consider this brainteaser: “A baseball bat and ball cost $1.10 together. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?”
Many people jumped to the answer of 10 cents, but a little thought shows the correct answer is five cents.
In a gambling task, people who tended to jump were more likely to pick worse bets instead of ones where they had a better chance of winning. Jumpers focused on how many times a winning outcome could happen rather than looking at all the possible outcomes.
"Jumpers also had problems with overconfidence: on a quiz about U.S. civics, they overestimated the chance that their answers were right significantly more than other participants did—even when their answers were wrong," Sanchez and Dunning explain.
"The distinctions in decision quality between those who jumped and those who did not remained even after we took intelligence—based on a test of verbal intellect—and personality differences into account. Our data also suggested the difference was not merely the result of jumpers rushing through our tasks."
So what’s going on? Why do some people jump to conclusions? The answer comes from a distinction psychological researchers make between two ways of thinking: automatic, called system 1, which includes ideas that come easily, quickly, and without effort; and controlled, or system 2, which involves conscious, careful, and deliberate reasoning.
"We used several assessments that teased apart how automatic our participants’ responses were and how much they engaged in deliberate analysis," Sanchez and Dunning say. "We found that jumpers and nonjumpers were equally swayed by automatic (system 1) thoughts. The jumpers, however, did not engage in controlled (system 2) reasoning to the same degree as nonjumpers."
It is system 2 thinking that helps people balance out mental errors and other biases from the quick, automatic system 1. In other words, jumpers were more likely to go with their first impression without thinking it through or questioning it. A weak system 2 approach was also linked more broadly to their problematic beliefs and poor reasoning.