Direct comparison of the efficacy of intuitive and analytical cognition in expert judgment

Abstract

Direct comparisons were made of expert highway engineers' use of analytical, quasirational, and intuitive cognition on three different tasks, each displayed in three different ways. Use of a systems approach made it possible to develop indices for measuring the location of each of the nine information display conditions on a continuum ranging from intuition-inducing to analysis-inducing and for measuring the location of each expert engineer's cognition on a continuum ranging from intuition to analysis. Individual analyses of each expert's performance over the nine conditions showed that the location of the task on the task index induced the expert's cognition to be located at the corresponding region on the cognitive continuum index. Intuitive and quasirational cognition frequently outperformed analytical cognition in terms of the empirical accuracy of judgments. Judgmental accuracy was related to the degree of correspondence between the type of task and the type of cognitive activity on the cognitive continuum.