Cognitive Reflection is a Stable Trait

Abstract

A widely used measure of individual propensity to utilize analytic processing is the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), a set of math problems with intuitively compelling but incorrect answers. Here, we ask whether scores on this measure are temporally stable. We aggregate data from 11 studies run on Amazon Mechanical Turk in which the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) was administered and identify N = 3,302 unique individuals who completed the CRT two or more times. We find a strong correlation between an individual’s first and last CRT performance, r = .806. This remains true even when constraining to data points separated by over 2 years, r = .755. Furthermore, we find that CRT scores from one timepoint correlated negatively with belief in God and social conservatism from the other timepoint (and to a similar extent as scores gathered at the same timepoint). These results show that CRT scores are stable over time, and – given the stable relationship between CRT and religious belief and ideology – provide some evidence for the stability of analytic cognitive style more generally.