Intuition and Domain Knowledge
Can you guess what the graphs at the right show? I’ll give you a couple of hints: (1) each graph measures performance on a different task, (2) one pair of bars in each graph—left or right—represents participants who used their intuition on the task, while the other pair of bars represents folks who used an analytical approach, and (3) one shading represents participants with low domain knowledge while the other represents participants with high domain knowledge (related to the actual task).
It will actually help you to take a moment and go ahead and guess how you would assign those labels, given the little information I have provided. Is the left pair of bars in each graph the “intuitive approach” or the “analytical approach”? Are the darker shaded bars in each graph “high knowledge” participants or “low knowledge” participants?
When Can I Trust My Gut?
A 2012 study by Dane, et. al, published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, sets out to address the “scarcity of empirical research spotlighting the circumstances in which intuitive decision making is effective relative to analytical decision making.”
To do this, the researchers conducted two experiments, both employing “non-decomposable” tasks—i.e., tasks that required intuitive decision making. The first task was to rate the difficulty (from 1 to 10) of each of a series of recorded basketball shots. The second task involved deciding whether each of a series of designer handbags was fake or authentic.
Why these tasks? A few snippets from the article can help to answer that question:
Following Dane and Pratt (2007, p. 40), we view intuitions as “affectively-charged judgments that arise through rapid, nonconscious, and holistic associations.” That is, the process of intuition, like nonconscious processing more generally, proceeds rapidly, holistically, and associatively (Betsch, 2008; Betsch & Glöckner, 2010; Sinclair, 2010). [Footnote: “This conceptualization of intuition does not imply that the process giving rise to intuition is without structure or method. Indeed, as with analytical thinking, intuitive thinking may operate based on certain rules and principles (see Kruglanski & Gigerenzer, 2011 for further discussion). In the case of intuition, these rules operate largely automatically and outside conscious awareness.”]
As scholars have posited, analytical decision making involves basing decisions on a process in which individuals consciously attend to and manipulate symbolically encoded rules systematically and sequentially (Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, & Eyre, 2007).
We viewed [the basketball] task as relatively non-decomposable because, to our knowledge, there is no universally accepted decision rule or procedure available to systematically break down and objectively weight the various elements of what makes a given shot difficult or easy.
We viewed [the handbag] task as relatively non-decomposable for two reasons. First, although there are certain features or clues participants could attend to (e.g., the stitching or the style of the handbags), there is not necessarily a single, definitive procedure available to approach this task . . . Second, because participants were not allowed to touch any of the handbags, they could not physically search for what they might believe to be give-away features of a real or fake handbag (e.g., certain tags or patterns inside the handbag).
Results
As you can see in the graphs at the right (high expertise in gray), there was a fairly significant difference in both tasks between low- and high-knowledge participants when those participants approached the task using their intuition. In contrast, high- and low-knowledge subjects in the analysis condition in each experiment did not show a significant difference in performance. (The decline in performance of the high-knowledge participants from the Intuition to the Analysis conditions was only significant in the handbag experiment.)
It is important to note that subjects in the analysis conditions (i.e., those who approached each task systematically) were not told what factors to look for in carrying out their analyses. For the basketball task, the researchers simply “instructed these participants to develop a list of factors that would determine the difficulty of a basketball shot and told them to base their decisions on the factors they listed.” For the handbag task, “participants in the analysis condition were given 2 min to list the features they would look for to determine whether a given handbag is real or fake and were told to base their decisions on these factors.”
Also consistent across both experiments was the fact that low-knowledge subjects performed better when approaching the tasks systematically than when using their intuition. For high-knowledge subjects, the results were the opposite. They performed better using their intuition than using a systematic analysis (even though the ‘system’ part of ‘systematic’ here was their own system!).
In addition, while the combined effects of approach and domain knowledge were significant, the approach (intuition or analysis) by itself did not have a significant effect on performance one way or the other in either experiment. Domain knowledge, on the other hand, did have a significant effect by itself in the basketball experiment.
Any Takeaways for K–12?
The clearest takeaway for me is that while knowledge and process are both important, knowledge is more important. Even though each of the tasks was more “intuitive” (non-decomposable) than analytical in nature, and even when the approach taken to the task was “intuitive,” knowledge trumped process. Process had no significant effect by itself. Knowing stuff is good.
Second, the results of this study are very much in line with what is called the ‘expertise reversal effect’:
Low-knowledge learners lack schema-based knowledge in the target domain and so this guidance comes from instructional supports, which help reduce the cognitive load associated with novel tasks. If the instruction fails to provide guidance, low-knowledge learners often resort to inefficient problem-solving strategies that overwhelm working memory and increase cognitive load. Thus, low-knowledge learners benefit more from well-guided instruction than from reduced guidance.
In contrast, higher-knowledge learners enter the situation with schema-based knowledge, which provides internal guidance. If additional instructional guidance is provided it can result in the processing of redundant information and increased cognitive load.
Finally, one wonders just who it is we are thinking about more when we complain, especially in math education, that overly systematized knowledge is ruining the creativity and motivation of our students. Are we primarily hearing the complaints of the 20%—who barely even need school—or those of the children who really need the knowledge we have, who need us to teach them?
Cross posted from Text Savvy.
Dane, E., Rockmann, K., & Pratt, M. (2012). When should I trust my gut? Linking domain expertise to intuitive decision-making effectiveness Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 119 (2), 187-194 DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2012.07.009