There is always a reason: Cognitive and experiential impacts on reasoned attitudes

While the pervasive notion that reasoning leads to optimal judgments seems commonsensical, some research has shown that reasoning sometimes causes suboptimal outcomes, suggesting that the relationship between reasons and judgment is more complicated than classically assumed. While cognitive theories ascribe the mechanisms of reasoned judgment to the reason content (e.g., quality and number), “ease of retrieval” research reveals an important role of reasoning experience; however, neither provides a complete account, hinting at missing links among cognitive and experiential factors. In this thesis, I report eight studies examining the relationships between reason quality and reasoning difficulty, and the conditions under which they predict attitudes and decisional satisfaction. Chapter 2 reports three studies showing that reasoning difficulty and perceived reason quality covary in the ease of retrieval paradigm: increasing numbers of reasons get increasingly difficult to generate, but also decrease in perceived quality, and it is quality rather than difficulty that uniquely predicts attitudes. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the causal relationship between difficulty and quality, and their downstream effect on attitude change. The results of four studies are most consistent with an interference hypothesis, such that experienced effort disrupts participants’ ability to cognitively elaborate on reasons, causing strong reasons to be judged as less persuasive, and weak reasons as more persuasive. The disrupting effects on perceived quality and attitude change are mitigated when people are highly motivated. Finally, Chapter 5 applies these insights to the issue of choice satisfaction, showing higher satisfaction after reasoning with ease, but adding more reasons neither increases nor decreases it. In sum, the findings show how the impacts of reasoning involve a complicated interplay among cognitive and experiential factors, ability and motivation to reason, and the contexts in which they are applied. Implications and applications of the findings, e.g., in advertising and deceptive message, limitations and future research venues are discussed