Humans appear to reason using two processing styles: System 1 processes that are quick, intuitive, and effortless and System 2 processes that are slow, analytical, and deliberate that occasionally correct the output of System 1. Four experiments suggest that System 2 processes are activated by metacognitive experiences of difficulty or disfluency during the process of reasoning. Incidental experiences of difficulty or disfluency—receiving information in a degraded font (Experiments 1 and 4), in difficultto-read lettering (Experiment 2), or while furrowing one’s brow (Experiment 3)—reduced the impact of heuristics and defaults in judgment (Experiments 1 and 3), reduced reliance on peripheral cues in persuasion (Experiment 2), and improved syllogistic reasoning (Experiment 4). Metacognitive experiences of difficulty or disfluency appear to serve as an alarm that activates analytic forms of reasoning that assess and sometimes correct the output of more intuitive forms of reasoning.

ABSTRACT—People construe the world along a continuum from concretely (focusing on specific, local details) to abstractly (focusing on global essences). We show that people are more likely to interpret the world abstractly when they experience cognitive disfluency, or difficulty processing stimuli in the environment, than when they experience cognitive fluency. We observed this effect using three instantiations of fluency: visual perceptual fluency (Study 1b), conceptual priming fluency (Study 2b), and linguistic fluency (Study 3). Adopting the framework of construal theory, we suggest that one mechanism for this effect is perceivers ’ tendency to interpret disfluently processed stimuli as farther from their current position than fluently processed stimuli (Studies 1a and 2a). Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play of 29,551 words about a fictitious Prince of Denmark. It is also a tragic tale of revenge and existential angst. Although both descriptions are accurate, they constitute fundamentally different representations of the play. Distinct cognitive and behavioral consequences might arise depending on whether a person construes the play in the concrete terms of the first description or the more abstract terms of the second description. Numerous factors appear to determine whether people represent a stimulus concretely or abstractly. One such factor is the Address correspondence to Adam Alter, Psychology Department, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544,

The authors acknowledge the helpful comments of Chris Janiszewski, Justin Kruger, and Anne-Laure Sellier on an earlier draft of the manuscript. Both authors contributed equally to the manuscript; author order was determined randomly. 1

Although researchers have documented many instances of crowd wisdom, it is important to know whether some kinds of judgments may lead the crowd astray, whether crowds ’ judgments improve with feedback over time, and whether crowds ’ judgments can be improved by changing the way judgments are elicited. We investigated these questions in a sports gambling context (predictions against point spreads) believed to elicit crowd wisdom. In a season-long experiment, fans wagered over $20,000 on NFL football predictions. Contrary to the wisdom-of-crowds hypothesis, faulty intuitions led the crowd to predict “favorites ” more than “underdogs ” against point spreads that disadvantaged favorites, even when bettors knew that the spreads disadvantaged favorites. Moreover, the bias increased over time, a result consistent with attributions for success and failure that rewarded intuitive choosing. However, when the crowd predicted game outcomes by estimating point differentials rather than by predicting against point spreads, its predictions were unbiased and wiser. 4 Decades of research have uncovered the many ways in which consumers ’ judgments err (e.g.,

Although researchers have documented many instances of crowd wisdom, it is important to know whether some kinds of judgments may lead the crowd astray, whether crowds ’ judgments improve with feedback over time, and whether crowds’ judgments can be improved by changing the way judgments are elicited. We investigated these questions in a sports gambling context (predictions against point spreads) believed to elicit crowd wisdom. In a season-long experiment, fans wagered over $20,000 on NFL football predictions. Contrary to the wisdom-of-crowds hypothesis, faulty intuitions led the crowd to predict “favorites ” more than “underdogs” against point spreads that disadvantaged favorites, even when bettors knew that the spreads disadvantaged favorites. Moreover, the bias increased over time, aresultconsistentwithattributionsforsuccessandfailurethatrewardedintuitive choosing. However, when the crowd predicted game outcomes by estimating point differentials rather than by predicting against point spreads, its predictions were unbiased and wiser. Decades of research have uncovered the many ways in which consumers ’ judgments err (e.g., Alba and Hutchinson

Consumers are influenced by the metaphoric relationship between cardinal direction and vertical position (i.e., “north is up”). People believe that it will take longer to travel north than south (Study 1), that it will cost more to ship to a northern than to a southern location (Studies 2 and 6), and that a moving company will charge more (Studies 3a and 3b) for northward than for southward movement. Furthermore, people have greater intention to visit stores advertised to be south (versus north) of a reference point (Study 4), especially when ease of travel is important

ABSTRACT—In five studies, we found that people like their names enough to unconsciously pursue consciously avoided outcomes that resemble their names. Baseball players avoid strikeouts, but players whose names begin with the strikeout-signifying letter K strike out more than others (Study 1). All students want As, but students whose names begin with letters associated with poorer performance (C and D) achieve lower grade point averages (GPAs) than do students whose names begin with A and B (Study 2), especially if they like their initials (Study 3). Because lower GPAs lead to lesser graduate schools, students whose names begin with the letters C and D attend lower-ranked law schools than students whose names begin with A and B (Study 4). Finally, in an experimental study, we manipulated congruence between participants ’ initials and the labels of prizes and found that participants solve fewer anagrams when a consolation prize shares their first initial than when it does not (Study 5). These findings provide striking evidence that unconsciously desiring negative name-resembling performance outcomes can insidiously undermine the more conscious pursuit of positive outcomes. Address correspondence to Leif D. Nelson, Rady School of Management,