The Prevalence of Metacognitive Routes to Judgment

Abstract

Metacognitive routes to judgment may be taken more often than suggested by Schwarz (2004). First, judgments that appear to be consistent with a systematic processing account may be based on higher order metacognitive theories. Specifically, individuals’ inferential judgments based on naive theories about retrieval ease may be interpreted to be potentially biased, resulting in an adjustment in the opposite direction of the initial judgment to correct for the bias. Second, whereas favorable attitudes may reflect the positive experience of processing fluency, favorable attitudes may also reflect naive theories at work. When the target (e.g., brand name, logo, etc.) can be more easily processed, the hedonic experience of processing fluency gives rise to more favorable attitudes toward the target. However, when information about the target (e.g., an ad highlighting benefits of the brand) can be more easily processed, individuals may interpret the experience of processing fluency based on naive theory and attribute the experience to the information being more persuasive, resulting in more favorable attitudes toward the target.