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Questions and challenges for the

new psychology of reasoning
a
Jonathan St. B. T. Evans
a
School of Psychology, University of Plymouth,
Plymouth, UK
Version of record first published: 21 Feb 2012
To cite this article: Jonathan St. B. T. Evans (2012): Questions and challenges for the
new psychology of reasoning, Thinking & Reasoning, 18:1, 5-31
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THINKING & REASONING, 2012, 18 (1), 5–31
Questions and challenges for the new psychology of

reasoning
Jonathan St. B. T. Evans

Downloaded by [University of Saskatchewan Library] at 16:11 24 August 2012
School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK
In common with a number of other authors I believe that there has been a
paradigm shift in the psychology of reasoning, specifically the area
traditionally labelled as the study of deduction. The deduction paradigm
was founded in a philosophical tradition that assumed logicality as the basis
for rational thought, and provided binary propositional logic as the agreed
normative framework. By contrast, many contemporary authors assume that
people have degrees of uncertainty in both premises and conclusions, and
reject binary logic as a workable normative system. I discuss a number of
questions and challenges for this new psychology of reasoning, including the
following: (a) Do we need an alternative normative system, such as
Bayesianism, for the new paradigm? (b) Is there any longer a clear distinction
between the study of deductive and inductive reasoning, the latter having its
own tradition and literature? (c) Precisely how is the integrated study of
reasoning and decision making facilitated by the new paradigm? (d) What
difficulties with dual-processing approaches need to be resolved, if they are to
take us forward?
Keywords: Deductive reasoning; New paradigm; Dual-process theory.
The psychology of reasoning, or more accurately a particular community

within it, has been undergoing an identity crisis for the past 20 years or so.
‘‘Reasoning’’, of course, is a broad term that some philosophers use almost
as a synonym for cognitive processing. Even within cognitive psychology we
have distinct fields focused on deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning,
Correspondence should be addressed to Jonathan St. B. T. Evans, School of Psychology,

University of Plymouth, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK. E-mail: j.evans@plymouth.ac.uk
I would like to thank David Over, Mike Oaksford, Keith Stanovich, and Shira Elqayam for
helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Ó 2012 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
http://www.psypress.com/tar http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2011.637674
6 EVANS
casual reasoning, counterfactual reasoning, and so on. The identity crisis

belongs to the first of these communities, the inheritors of the tradition of
‘‘deductive’’ reasoning. This field has its origins in pre-war psychological
studies (e.g., Wilkins, 1928; Woodworth & Sells, 1935) but also in a long
philosophical tradition of logicist thinking, in the sense of that term which
assumes logic to be the foundation for rational human thought (see Henle,
1962). Post-war study was particularly inspired by the work of Peter Wason
whose early book with Phil Johnson-Laird helped to define the field (Wason
& Johnson-Laird, 1972). As this psychology of reasoning developed clear
identity and paradigms, I authored a review some 10 years later (Evans,

1982) and then, with others, an update in the early 1990s (Evans, Newstead,
& Byrne, 1993). But even as the last was published, discontent with the
paradigm was developing.
The essential problem with this ‘‘old’’ paradigm psychology of reasoning
was this. It was founded primarily on the study of deduction, with especial
attention to syllogistic, conditional, and relational inferences, all of which
take a deductive form. That is, participants are invited to evaluate or
generate conclusions that are logically necessitated by the premises given to
them, and which they must assume to be true. The same community of
researchers also worked extensively on the Wason selection task (first
published by Wason, 1966) which, while involving elements of hypothesis
testing, was also regarded mostly as a test of logical reasoning ability. While
the field became increasingly popular and well researched, and inspired
many theoretical ideas, it strayed far from its original purpose, which was to
assess the logicality of naı̈ve human reasoning. It is important to note also
that this notion of logicality was a very restricted one, based on traditional
extensional or binary logic, in which all propositions are assumed to be
either true or false.
By around 2000 many researchers using the paradigm were questioning
the idea that logic could provide a description of human reasoning, and
many were also casting doubt on logic as an appropriate normative system
(Evans, 2002; Oaksford & Chater, 1998). While these authors complained
about ‘‘logicism’’ in the psychology of reasoning, it is again standard
bivalent logic that they had in mind. Any well-formed mathematical system
is a closed deductive system that can be regarded as a logic in which
theorems (proven conclusions) are deduced from axioms (assumptions).
Probability theory, which is much used in the new paradigm, actually
reduces to binary logic when probabilities are set to 1 or 0. For example, if
we set P(A and B) ¼ 1, we can conclude that P(A) ¼ 1, thus preserving
certainty (truth). So it is more accurate to say that authors were objecting to
binary logic, which does not allow beliefs represented as subjective
probabilities that range freely from 0 to 1, rather than logic per se. I will
return to this point later. Given the level of discontent with standard logic,
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY OF REASONING 7
however, it seems inappropriate to continue to call our research field the

psychology of deductive reasoning and to retain the traditional deduction
paradigm as its central instrument. This situation was brought home to me
recently when I was invited to update a book chapter, previously entitled
Deductive Reasoning. I was obliged to drop the ‘‘Deductive’’ in the rewrite
and also to explain to readers why the field had lost its original identity in
some kind of Kuhnian paradigm shift (Evans, in press b).
The paradigm has in fact been shifting since the early 1990s at least, and
there are now a number of authors whom we believe we have moved, or are
moving, towards a new paradigm psychology of reasoning that frees us from

the shackles of binary logic and the deduction paradigm (Bonnefon, 2011;
Evans, in press b; Manktelow, Over, & Elqayam, 2011; Oaksford & Chater,
2010; Over, 2009). The new paradigm is variously described as a shift from
viewing reasoning in terms of deduction to that of a probabilistic process; as
a common view of reasoning, judgement, and decision making as involving
similar processes; as a switch from a normative system based on logic to that
based on Bayesianism, or as a recognition of the essential pragmatic and
inductive nature of all human reasoning, and so on. The former restriction
that premises must be assumed to be true also no longer applies, so that we
can now consider how people reason with degrees of uncertainty in all of
their beliefs, as proposed originally by de Finetti (1937/1964) and Ramsey
(1926/1990), the founders of contemporary Bayesianism (Oaksford &
Chater, 2007, 2009; Over, 2009; Pfeifer & Kleiter, 2010; Politzer, Over, &
Baratgin, 2010). However, it is far from clear to me that the process of
shifting the paradigm is complete, for two reasons. First there are those,
especially in the mental models tradition established by Johnson-Laird
(1983; Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991) who seem content to continue with the
deductive tradition. For example, Johnson-Laird (2006) maintains a clear
distinction between inductive and deductive inference, and offers explana-
tions of many reasoning phenomena in terms of extensional reasoning about
possibilities, which is essentially deductive and retains the norms of binary
logic. Deduction has, of course, also been central to proponents of the
mental logic tradition (Braine & O’Brien, 1998; Rips, 1994), a view of
human reasoning still strongly advocated in the developmental literature at
least (Ricco & Overton, 2011). Second, there are unresolved issues about
whether the new paradigm requires an alternative normative system, which I
discuss below.
The deduction paradigm has continued to be used in a number of
published studies in the past decade, although its purpose and interpretation
may differ from the earlier tradition. For example, in the dual-processing
paradigm deductive reasoning is now seen as a strategic-level concept. That
is, it is a form of reasoning that high-ability participants might engage in
when suitably instructed and motivated to make deductive effort (Evans,
8 EVANS
2007a; Stanovich, 2011b). The linkage between cognitive ability and

‘‘rational task construal’’ was first discussed by Stanovich (1999, Ch. 4;
Stanovich, 2011b) with regard to a range of judgement, reasoning, and
decision-making tasks. In a recent example we have shown that higher-
ability participants are more likely to resist belief bias in conditional
reasoning, but only do so when specifically instructed to reason deductively
(Evans, Handley, Neilens, Bacon, & Over, 2010). There is no question that
at least some people can reason deductively and even enjoy doing so, given
the popularity of Sudoku puzzles, for example (Lee, Goodwin, & Johnson-
Laird, 2008). And there are certainly real-world applications where the
ability to construe and reason in binary logic terms is needed, particularly
where legal rules are concerned—for example, deciding whether you are able
to claim tax relief. However, the notion of deductive reasoning as a strategy
is far removed from the original logicism that drove the development of the
paradigm in the 1960s and 70s. Rather than being a built-in function of the
human mind, deductive reasoning can be seen as just one of many kinds of
problem solving and formal thinking in which people of sufficient IQ can
engage.
Where the field has changed sharply in the past decade is that the same
community of researchers are using a much wider range of cognitive tasks.
For example, we now see these psychologists investigating both reasoning
and decision-making problems, with common theoretical objectives (e.g., De
Neys & Glumicic, 2008; De Neys & Franssens, 2009; Thompson, Turner, &
Pennycock, in press). In addition to the common study of deductive
conditional inferences, there are increasing numbers of studies where people
are asked to reason pragmatically with conditionals (e.g., Evans et al., 2010;
Thompson, Evans, & Handley, 2005). Conditionals have also been
investigated recently with non-deductive tasks when, for example, partici-
pants are asked to judge the probability of the conditional statement given
some evidence (Evans, Handley, & Over, 2003; Oberauer, Weidenfeld, &
Fischer, 2007; Oberauer & Wilhelm, 2003; Over, Hadjichristidis, Evans,
Handley, & Sloman, 2007). This has led to a finding of fundamental
importance for the new paradigm: the modal response is to equate the
judged probability of the conditional statement, P(if p then q), to the
conditional probability P(qjp)—often known as the Equation—and not to
the probability of the material conditional, P(not-p or q), as implied by
theories of conditional reasoning founded in the old binary logic (e.g.,
Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 2002). A conditional so related to the conditional
probability is a suppositional or probability conditional that is evaluated by
the Ramsey test, where p is hypothetically supposed for the purpose of
assessing the extent to which q follows (Evans & Over, 2004). Empirical
support for the Equation supports the intuitions of philosophers who have
abandoned the material conditional as an account of ordinary conditionals
(Edgington, 1995) and has excited further recent interest from philosophical
logicians (Douven & Dietz, 2011; Douven & Verbrugge, 2010). This finding
also facilitates Bayesian accounts of conditional inference in which the
conditional statement is replaced by the conditional probability (Pfeifer &
Kleiter, 2010; Oaksford & Chater, 2007).
Practitioners of the new psychology of reasoning are also now free to
study informal reasoning and argumentation alongside the traditional
deductive forms. An example is ‘‘myside bias’’ (Baron, 1995) in which
participants are more likely to evaluate arguments as good if they agree with
their own perspective. In contrast with more formal measures of reasoning,

this bias seems to be independent of cognitive ability (Stanovich & West,
2007, 2008a, 2008b). In an interesting new development Hahn and Oaksford
(2007) examined a number of forms of argument classically considered
fallacies, such as arguments from ignorance, slippery slope arguments, or
circular arguments, claiming in each case that a normative account of the
strength of such arguments could be given in terms of Bayesian principles,
thus bringing them within the new paradigm psychology of reasoning. In a
controversial but interesting recent paper, Mercier and Sperber (2010) have
suggested that human reasoning evolved for the purposes of argumentation,
which is still its main application, with any benefit for problem solving being
incidental. In support of this they point to a large amount of evidence that
participants often use reasoning to confabulate explanations for intuitive
choices in reasoning and decision tasks.
The traditional deduction paradigm required participants to assume the
truth of premises and to draw logically necessary conclusions. This was
linked to a normative theory rooted in binary extensional logic, by which
their efforts were judged right or wrong (very often the latter). There is no
doubt that the reliance on both this paradigm and its associated normative
systems has greatly decreased in the past 10–20 years, and that a much wider
range of methods are now being applied to the study of human reasoning. In
the process we are also now considering belief to be represented in many
shades of grey, in contrast with the black and white truth functions of binary
logic. I can safely say that the field has changed almost beyond recognition
from the one that I entered as a PhD student back in 1969. However, I am
not convinced that all the implications of this paradigm shift have yet been
understood. In this paper I outline some questions and challenges to be
faced in this new psychology of reasoning.
DO WE NEED NORMATIVE SYSTEMS?

The psychology of deductive reasoning up to around 1990 had not just a
main paradigm (deductive tasks plus the Wason selection task) but also a
clear normative system: extensional, binary logic—to be precise, in the main
10 EVANS
the propositional calculus in which all statements are deemed to be either

true or false. Quantified reasoning (for which the predicate calculus provides
a normative system) was relatively neglected, with the main exception of the
archaic Aristotelian syllogisms. In all cases reasoning was evaluated using
an appropriate normative analysis. Thus people were right or wrong, and
data were often reported in terms of the number of logically correct or
erroneous inferences (still a common practice in the literature on children’s
reasoning). Of course, empirical findings showed again and again deviations
from this normative standard, leading to the paradox of rationality on which
various authors commented (e.g., Cohen, 1981; Evans & Over, 1996;
O’Brien, 1993). If the human race is so observably smart—just look at where
we have gone with science and technology—then why can we not solve these
simple logic problems? Something was clearly wrong, although authors
differed in their views about what it was. One possibility was that logic was
not all it had been cracked up to be in centuries of philosophical writing; it
did not, after all, form the foundation of human intelligence. Another was
that there was something wrong with the experimental methods: laboratory
experiments were somehow unrepresentative or tricking people into biases
that would not normally occur in the real world. Either way, the deduction
paradigm was in trouble. And as the Tversky and Kahneman programme of
research into heuristics and biases (Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002;
Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982) gathered steam through the 1970s and
80s, a parallel debate occurred in the judgement and decision-making
literature.
I believe that the dissatisfaction with binary logic as a normative system
was the main cause of the paradigm shift in the psychology of reasoning.
The Alternative Norm approach, advocated by Cohen (1981) acquired a
following in the early 1990s when authors began to discuss reasoning tasks
in terms of decision theory and probabilistic processing (Chater &
Oaksford, 1999; Manktelow & Over, 1990; Oaksford & Chater, 1994).
Rather than viewing people as being illogical and therefore irrational, as
Wason had done earlier, it was possible to see them as conforming, at least
approximately, to an alternative normative theory of competence on
reasoning tasks. For example, the traditional erroneous choices on the
selection task were (somewhat controversially) reinterpreted as a rational
information search strategy (Oaksford & Chater, 1994). The ecological
validity issue, originally introduced by Cohen, was also raised by some
authors. Hence belief bias in reasoning could be seen as reflecting a rational
real-world strategy in which only evidence and argument against one’s
beliefs require close scrutiny (Evans & Over, 1996). Only under laboratory
conditions did this manifest as a cognitive bias.
Not everyone was happy with the Alternative Norm approach. Stanovich
and West published a number of studies in 1990s showing that participants
of high IQ were more likely to give the standard normative answer on a

range of reasoning and decision-making tasks (Stanovich, 1999; Stanovich
& West, 2000). This included the Wason selection task (Stanovich & West,
1998) for which alternative norms were being proposed. However, more
recent studies of individual differences have shown a number of cognitive
biases that are maintained by those of high intelligence, especially when
between-participant designs are used (Stanovich & West, 2008b). In any
event, a switch from standard logic to alternative normative (or at least
formal) systems has been a continuing feature of the paradigm shift. In one
example, Evans and Over (2004) drew strong inspiration from contempor-
ary philosophical writing about the ordinary conditional (e.g., Edgington,
1995) in developing their theory of the suppositional conditional. In
another, Oaksford and Chater (2007, 2009) have strongly advocated a
unified approach to the psychology of reasoning and decision making based
on Bayesian rationality.
As mentioned earlier, it is far from clear that the new psychology of
reasoning has abandoned logic in a broad sense, as opposed to bivalent
propositional logic. Various authors (e.g., Evans & Over, 2004; Oaksford &
Chater, 2010) have drawn attention to the probabilistic logic of Adams
(1975, 1998), which allows inferences drawn from uncertain premises to be
considered probabilistically valid or p-valid. In traditional logic deductive
inference is truth-preserving. Assumptions are to be held as if certain, and a
valid conclusion will then also be certain, so validity preserves certainty.
This clearly will not do for the new paradigm, whose researchers regard
everyday inference as being based on uncertain beliefs and resulting in
conclusions that can be held only with a degree of probability. For this
reason a number of authors are now appealing to Adams’ notion of p-
validity. While p-validity is not generally truth-preserving (and we now have
little use for truth) it does preserve the confidence we hold in our beliefs.
Specifically, a p-valid conclusion cannot be more uncertain than the
premises on which it is based. (Note that p-valid conclusions preserve truth
or certainty in the special case where probabilities are set only to 1 or 0.
Hence, all p-valid inferences are also valid in propositional logic, although
the converse does not hold.) However, while p-validity has obvious
applications in a new paradigm based on degrees of belief, it is too narrow
to define the new paradigm in the way that traditional logic defined the old
one. We no longer want just to account for how people draw conclusions
from premises. We also want to understand how they understand and
represent statements and relevant beliefs, and how they apply reasoning
about beliefs in service of their judgement and decision making.
There is an important debate as to whether the new paradigm needs a
normative system at all, in the sense of the ability to evaluate reasoning as
right or wrong. Why can we not simply provide descriptive accounts of
12 EVANS
reasoning and decision making in the same way that we do for other
cognitive systems, such as those involved in language, memory, and
perception? Our theories could be inspired by formal theories (as was the
suppositional theory of conditionals) without necessarily endorsing them as
being normative. To take an example, we have recently discovered (Evans,
Handley, Neilens, & Over, 2007) that adults of higher intelligence are more
likely to treat conditionals as being suppositional (only applying when their
antecedent conditions hold); correspondingly, children treat conditionals in
a more suppositional manner as they grow older (Barrouillet, Gauffroy, &
Lecas, 2008). We might be tempted to use this as evidence that not only is
the material conditional of standard logic the wrong normative system but
also that it should be replaced by the Adams or probabilistic conditional.
Hence older children and more intelligent adults are correct when they judge
that conditionals are irrelevant to situations in which their antecedents are
false, and that their probability should be equated with that of the
consequent given the antecedent. But I can see neither sense nor purpose in
this. First, it involves a highly dubious from of inference from ‘‘is’’ to
‘‘ought’’ (Elqayam & Evans, 2011). To show, for example, that people
conform more to a Bayesian system of reasoning, rather than one based on
extensional logic, is not to establish that that is what they ‘‘should’’ do.
Second, logicians and philosophers, and not psychologists, have the job of
arguing which logical system is normatively correct. Even some philoso-
phers like Edgington (1995, 2003) have favoured the Adams or supposi-
tional conditional in spite of some significant drawbacks it has as a logical
system. They do so because it provides a much more plausible descriptive
account of the ordinary conditional of natural language.
When I use the term ‘‘descriptive’’ I mean non-evaluative: I certainly do
not mean atheoretical. I recently proposed a theory of hypothetical thinking
based on a set of principles that describe its nature, together with a dual-
processing mechanism, and applied this to a wide range of reasoning and
decision tasks (Evans, 2007a). Nothing in this account is judgemental about
the quality of the reasoning observed. Of course we can assume that such a
system evolved to be adaptive and hence expect it to have clear utility for the
achievement of people’s goals. It must in some sense be fit for purpose. But
we can also observe the degree of efficiency with which it performs, in the
same way as we can explore the processing limitations of memory and
perceptual systems. This is not the same thing as making judgements of
rationality at the personal level, as some psychologists clearly wish to do
(Stanovich, 2011b). Another example of a descriptive theoretical account is
that of Bonnefon’s (2009) theory of utility conditionals, which is based on
folk-psychological principles that are certainly not intended to be
normative. And where we have a clearly defined theory of reasoning, such
as that of Johnson-Laird’s mental model theory, is it necessary to introduce
normative concepts at all? Model theory, for example, describes a system of

reasoning about possibilities that can generate necessary (deductive)
inferences but also some (extensional) probabilistic ones (Johnson-Laird,
2006). Is it important that it can provide a normative account of deductive
competence as its advocates have often stressed? My only arguments with
the theory concern whether it provides a correct description of how people
reason, for example with conditional statements (Evans, Over, & Handley,
2005). Where it does not, in my view, is due in part to the apparent wish of
its advocates to describe the core meaning of conditionals as material and to
defend the paradoxical inferences to which it leads as being valid ( Byrne &
Johnson-Laird, 2009; Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 2002). A more descriptively
adequate version of the model theory can be constructed when this goal is
abandoned (Barrouillet et al., 2008).
Recently Shira Elqayam and I presented an argument for a descriptive
rather than normative approach to the psychology of reasoning and
decision making in an open-peer commentary journal (Elqayam & Evans,
2011). Both psychologists and philosophers commented, but concentrating
on the former group it is notable that relatively few either fully supported
our descriptivism or strongly defended normativism. Instead, as we
observed in our response (Evans & Elqayam, 2011), the majority adopted
a position we call ‘‘soft normativism’’. While agreeing with a number of our
criticisms of normative thinking in the field (e.g., to bias the process of
research or interpretation of findings) there was still a view among the
majority that normative analysis has a useful role to play, although opinions
differed (or were vague) on the question of exactly what that role should be.
Taking this debate as whole, it confirms my view that practitioners of the
new psychology of reasoning (among whom I would count most of these
psychological commentators) are far from agreed on the status and purpose
of normative theory in the contemporary study of reasoning. Hence I argue
that this is a clear challenge for researchers to address before we can say
with confidence that we have completed our Kuhnian paradigm shift. There
are others, which I discuss below.
ARE THERE DIFFERENT KINDS OF REASONING?

In traditional logic there is a clear distinction between inductive and
deductive inference. As mentioned earlier, deduction is truth-preserving so
that conclusions never add information to the premises. This makes it a
commendable system for reasoning when premises can simply be assumed to
be true, as when these are the axioms of a mathematical theory, but quite
useless for decision making or learning about the real world. We cannot, by
deduction, make generalisations from observations or make abductive
inferences from effects to causes—two forms of inductive inference. While
14 EVANS
such inductive inferences are logically invalid, they provide the key
mechanisms by which a child learns from experience during cognitive
development and also play an equally vital role in scientific thinking.
Without inductive generalisation we would have no scientific laws and
without abduction we would have no scientific explanations. Science
appears to involve alternating deductive and inductive reasoning. We
observe an effect—say rising global temperatures—and speculate inductively
on causes like greenhouse gases. We develop a theoretical account and then
test it deductively by predicting new observations. When these contradict
the theory, we revise it by a further process of induction and so on.

Classically, induction and deduction are distinct and Popper’s (1959)
falsificationist philosophy of science was an attempt to found science on
valid, extensional inference from assumptions in conformity with classical
logic. However, Popper has been much criticised in the philosophical
literature, with some philosophers moving from his logicism to a Bayesian
philosophy of science (e.g., Howson & Urbach, 1993) in a striking parallel
with the paradigm shift in the psychology of reasoning. In the Bayesian
approach, theories are held with a degree of confidence which can be revised
both upwards and downwards as new empirical findings are observed.
In the old, binary paradigm it made sense to study deductive inference
quite separately from hypothesis testing, concept learning, inductive
generalisation, and all forms of learning (for examples of the psychological
study of inductive inference, see Feeney & Heit, 2007; Holland, Holyoak,
Nisbett, & Thagard, 1986). The field had a very clear identity. But the new
paradigm that inheritors of the deductive tradition are adopting involves
pragmatics, belief-based reasoning, probabilistic inference, and practical
reasoning for decision making. The move away from logicism blurs the
distinction between deductive and inductive inference and cancels our right
to regard ourselves as a distinct field that can safely ignore a number of
other literatures on higher cognitive processing. We increasingly view our
participants as operating not in terms of truth and falsity, but in the
numerous degrees of confidence that their belief systems can differentiate.
And we now often ask our participants to judge probabilities or to draw
plausible inferences with a degree of confidence, rather than to judge truth
or to draw conclusions with certainty.
The point is that if we are no longer studying the psychology of deductive
reasoning, but instead just the psychology of reasoning, then we must allow
a lot of new members into the club. And in the process a whole lot of other
literatures open up behind us. Of course, this is quite irritating because the
community of researchers is still quite well defined, even if the paradigm is
not. And the last thing any researcher wants is to have to attend a lot of new
conferences and read masses of back literature. It is much more comfortable
to stay with what (and whom) we know. And of course those other research
communities might not want us in their clubs either. But we have a

responsibility as publicly funded scientists not to re-invent the wheel and
waste resources on duplicate research studies. So if the reasoning we are
studying these days is more inductive than deductive, we had better find out
what it is those induction people have been studying.
I have had a little look, reading the collection of papers edited by Feeney
and Heit (2007). Just as we have had our pet paradigms like syllogistic
reasoning and the Wason selection task, so they have theirs, most
particularly category-based induction which seems to involve a lot of
speculation about which creatures have imaginary features like sesamoid

bones. (I am sure researchers in that tradition would be equally baffled by
the fascination that many in the deductive tradition have with, say, the study
of classical syllogisms, which must have engendered around 20 different
theories. In some studies, syllogisms also employ nonsense terms.) But if we
are the psychology of reasoning, should we not also be looking at the
literatures on hypothesis testing, concept learning, and abductive inference
at least? Not forgetting topics like causal inference and counterfactual
thinking, of course, and the literature on informal reasoning, which is all
about pragmatics, belief, and uncertain inference. And since we are
interested in belief, should we not also look at the vast number of studies
of reasoning and judgement in the social cognition literature?
I am not suggesting that it is seriously possible for reasoning researchers
to master or keep up with all these diverse and large literatures. But I am
making a point. In the move away from logic and deduction, we have lost
our clear identity. If not deductive inference, what exactly are we studying
now? And how does it differ from the thinking and reasoning that is studied
in many other established literatures? This goes to the core of the identity
crisis, which I emphasise we have not yet solved simply by declarations of a
new paradigm. And it brings me to the title of this section. Are there in fact
different kinds of human reasoning, or just different traditions for studying
it? A few psychologists have tackled this question head-on by asking
whether deductive and inductive inference are psychologically (as opposed
to logically) distinct. There are studies that show that when people are asked
to make judgements of (deductive) logical validity, they are affected
differently by experimental manipulations than when they make judgements
of (inductive) argument strength (Rips, 2001; Rotello & Heit, 2009).
However, such findings are close analogues of what is often observed within
the ‘‘deductive reasoning’’ literature using the dual-process framework,
discussed below. Many studies, for example, show that people’s inferences
are less affected by their beliefs when strict deductive reasoning instructions
are employed (e.g., Evans et al., 2010; George, 1995; Stevenson & Over,
1995). Asking people to judge argument strength (the tradition in the
inductive literature) and to judge the likelihood of conclusions, which is used
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in deduction tradition when pragmatic reasoning instructions are required

for contrast, could easily tap into the same underlying mental processes.
As others have observed (e.g., Rotello & Heit, 2009), the differences
between inductive and deductive reasoning may relate to the distinctions
made between Type 1 and 2 processes in dual-process theories of reasoning
(Evans, 2007a, 2008; Stanovich, 2011b). Type 2 processing is considered to
be high effort, responsive to instructions, and capable of dealing with
abstraction and novelty, often allowing at least high-ability participants
with appropriate instructions to solve deductive problems. Type 1
processing by contrast is rapid and low effort, and may be based on

associative processing and implicit knowledge (Sloman, 1996). It often takes
the blame for cognitive biases, especially belief biases. But it is an error to
think that Type 1 processing is necessarily biased or that Type 2 processing
is necessarily logical and abstract (Evans, 2007a, in press a). Both types of
processing can lead to correct answers and both can lead to biases (see also
Stanovich, 2011b). Type 1 processing can provide intuitive feelings of
confidence in conclusions that are often followed when participants are
making low effort to reason analytically (Thompson et al., in press). Such
feelings, based on automatic processing in semantic networks, for example,
could easily underlie judgements made in the category-based induction
literature.
I have long been of the view that the deductive reasoning literature was
never really exclusively or even primarily concerned with deductive
processes (Evans, 1982). Interest in deduction and logicality motivated the
paradigm and many researchers within it, but the administration of
deductive reasoning tasks always stimulated a wide range of implicit and
explicit processes in the minds of the participants, a number of which had
nothing to do with logical reasoning. This is what led to the development of
dual-process theories and ultimately to the paradigm shift on which I am
commenting. While the division of both research communities and
literatures into manageable-sized chunks is likely to continue, I do think it
behoves new paradigm enthusiasts to be aware that the cognitive processes
are almost certainly similar to those being studied by many other
psychologists from other traditions. An attempt at some form of integration
should at least be adopted as a long-term objective by those working in these
fields.
JUST EXACTLY HOW DO THE PSYCHOLOGIES OF

REASONING AND DECISION MAKING CONNECT?
It is my experience that psychologists of reasoning within the research
community I am discussing are generally quite well informed about research
on judgement and decision making (JDM) or at least aspects of that vast
field that are more focused on questions about cognitive processing. A

number of us see broad theoretical links and have been exploring them for
some time (Evans, 1989, 2007a; Evans & Over, 1996; Manktelow & Over,
1991; Oaksford & Chater, 1998, 2007; Stanovich, 1999; Stanovich, 2011b).
As mentioned earlier, there is an increasing trend for reasoning researchers to
include JDM tasks in their experiments and predict similar findings with
related experimental manipulations. It is a somewhat one-sided relationship,
as I do not see too many researchers raised in the JDM tradition contributing
to the reasoning literature. But some, at least, take an interest in it.
The question addressed in this section is clearly related to that discussed

in the previous one. We may have some trademark tasks and paradigms but
we do not have a monopoly on the cognitive processes we study. It also
relates to the previous discussion about normative systems because these
were responsible, in part, for the appearance of a distinct boundary between
the psychology of reasoning and decision making. Traditionally, both fields
were concerned with assessing human rationality. But while reasoning
researchers examined people’s ability to reason logically, decision research-
ers checked their adherence to the rules of decision theory and the
probability calculus: apparently inconsistent objectives.
What stimulated my own interest in JDM was the heuristics and biases
tradition started by Tversky and Kahneman in the early 1970s, and I have
run and published occasional studies of my own on statistical inference since
the 1970s. The striking parallel for me in 1970s and 80s, however, was that
my research on deductive reasoning increasingly led me to study cognitive
biases and propose heuristic processing as explanations for them. This was
the basis for my first attempt to integrate the two fields within a common
framework (Evans, 1989). But I was always aware that my use of the term
‘‘heuristic’’ might be different from that of Kahneman and Tversky.
Heuristic processing, contrasted with analytic processing, was a forerunner
of the contemporary Type 1 and 2 distinction. But when Tversky and
Kahneman introduced heuristics for probability judgements such as
representativeness (Kahneman & Tversky, 1972) and availability (Tversky
& Kahneman, 1973) it was far from clear to me whether or not these were
intended to be consciously applied rules. Only recently has Kahneman
(Kahneman & Frederick, 2002) made explicit a dual-process model that was
implicit in his earlier writing (e.g., Kahneman & Tversky, 1982). In the new
theory, while substantial elements of the famous Tversky and Kahneman
heuristics are attributed to Type 1 processing, it is recognised that heuristics
can also be explicitly applied in Type 2 processing. A similar ambiguity
arises with Gigerenzer’s fast and frugal heuristic programme (Gigerenzer,
2004) which I have recently discussed (Evans, 2010b, Ch. 4).
The reader may not be surprised to learn that I believe the best way to
connect reasoning and decision making is with a dual-process approach.
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Given the ambiguity of the term ‘‘heuristic’’, let us talk for now about
intuition and reflection. Intuition (Type 1) is fast and automatic, giving rise
to feelings of confidence in answers or decisions but with no conscious
knowledge of the basis of these feelings. Reflective processing (Type 2) is
slower, involving manipulation of representations through working
memory, at least part of which appears to be consciously accessible.
However, reflective processing does not necessarily override or correct faulty
intuitions: it often confabulates justifications for them (Evans, 2010b, Ch. 7;
Mercier & Sperber, 2010). Thompson (2009; Thompson et al., in press) has
proposed that metacognitive feelings of rightness (FOR) in initial decisions

are a major determinant of whether people accept them or attempt to
reformulate the problem using high-effort reflective thinking. However, she
and her colleagues have also shown that accuracy is no predictor of FOR in
syllogistic reasoning (Shynkarkuk & Thompson, 2006) and that rethinking
can lead to changing a normatively correct decision (about logical validity)
as often as an incorrect one.
Reasoning tasks require decisions: the participants must determine
whether the conclusion follows, or which cards need to be selected. These
tasks have been classically regarded as tests of logical reasoning on the
assumption that such processing provided the rationale for correct or
incorrect decisions. But of course, these decisions could instead be made
intuitively, with FOR determined by such well-researched factors as
matching or belief biases. In fact I observed recently that the study of
deductive reasoning has paradoxically led us to learn a great deal about
intuition (Evans, 2010a). In the same way, we can regard most JDM tasks as
reasoning as well as decision tasks. For example, in multi-attribute decision
making it is classically assumed that people will need to combine presented
information (or subjective judgements) about the relative weighting of
multiple cues in the environment and value of each choice on each cue, in
order to conform with the normative utility theory. But this requires Type 2
reflective reasoning to achieve, and once again people may rely on intuitions
or simple heuristics instead.
So it may appear that, at a psychological level, a common approach to
the study of reasoning and decision making is feasible. However, advocates
of the new paradigm must spell out exactly what it is that they are doing,
and how it differs from the old paradigm. I believe it is helpful to consider
here some distinctions made by philosophers, including the fundamental
difference between beliefs and desires. Philosophers distinguish theoretical
reasoning, which serves epistemic goals (beliefs), and practical reasoning,
which serves action (fulfilment of desires). The old psychology of reasoning
was primarily concerned with beliefs; that is, reasoning that preserves truth
through deduction. However, in the old paradigm beliefs were a binary
concept, with propositions held to be either true or false. In the study of
decision making, beliefs have long been represented as probabilities. In the

standard subjective expected utility (SEU) model, for example, decision
makers need to estimate the subjective probability of various outcomes in
order to make optimal decisions under risk. Hence the adoption of a
probabilistic notion of belief in the new psychology of reasoning takes it a
step closer to the study of decision making. But it is not enough: decision
making also deals with desires, which are reflected in the utilities or
subjective values that people attach to outcomes. These represent, again by
variable degrees, the extent to which outcomes attain their personal goals.
The normative systems employed—in the old paradigm psychology of

reasoning and in decision theory—reflected these differences. The
computational-level account of reasoning tasks was about how people
computed the truth of propositions in extensional logic, whereas in the
study of decision making it was about how people calculated the expected
utility of actions, defined in terms of degrees of both belief and desire. The
goals that drive choices on traditional reasoning tasks are epistemic,
concerning beliefs. By contrast, traditional decision-making tasks are
concerned with practical goals, serving desires: which choice of action will
bring the most benefit? It is this orientation towards binary belief on the
one hand, and degrees of belief and of desire aimed at practical action on
the other, that has separated these fields more fundamentally than the
distinct normative accounts applied.
It seems to me that we can define the paradigm shift in the psychology of
reasoning in a narrow or broad sense. The narrow sense continues to restrict
the field to the study of theoretical reasoning for epistemic goals. In this
respect we can say that the change is that we no longer think of people as
representing beliefs as true or false propositions, but rather with variable
degrees of subjective probability. Hence the appeal by some authors to
Bayesian theory as more appropriate normative account than bivalent logic.
And by this measure we can construct computational-level accounts that
compute probabilities, or degrees of belief, rather than truth. Even with this
narrow definition of the new paradigm, we can make more linkage with
JDM than was possible previously. This is because some JDM researchers
have been studying tasks with epistemic as well as practical goals for many
years. A very large field is concerned with statistical inference and
probability judgement—the domain that forms the main focus of the
heuristics and biases tradition started by Tversky and Kahneman. These
tasks concern reasoning about beliefs. The same is true of the fast and frugal
heuristics programme of Gigerenzer and colleagues. Using a recognition
heuristic to decide the size of German cities, for example, is an epistemic
rather than practical pursuit. Historically, much study of decision making
was focused on risky choices that appeared to violate the norm of expected
utility. However, this led to interest in how people form and calibrate
20 EVANS
subjective probabilities that underlie such choices, thus shifting some of the
study from desires to beliefs.
I believe that JDM researchers started at the right end, since ultimately all
cognitive mechanisms must strive for instrumental rationality—the achieve-
ment of practical goals—in order to survive the processes of evolution and
learning. For the same reason I would not wish to see the new paradigm
psychology of reasoning restricted to the study of theoretical reasoning with
epistemic goals. We must also study the practical reasoning that underlies
decisions and actions (Bonnefon, 2011). Having a reasonably accurate set of
beliefs about the world is not ultimately an end in itself, but a means to the
end of action and decision making. As I have commented elsewhere (Evans
& Elqayam, 2011), our representations of the world need not fit some
philosophical criterion of ‘‘truth’’ but merely have to be fit for the purposes
of practical action they serve. A good example of this is the folk psychology
that many believe to have been built into the human mind through evolution
(see Evans, 2010b, Ch. 2). It is evident that the principles of folk psychology
fall way short of those developed in the scientific study of psychology in the
past 150 years. Nor would it have been possible for evolution to have
equipped us with such detailed knowledge of the human mind. But the
belief-desire folk psychology that we all share serves very well the practical
goals of predicting and understanding the behaviour of fellow humans, as
well as other higher animals. We evolved this system because we could and
because it has adaptive value.
In the broad view of the new paradigm psychology of reasoning we are
concerned with both belief and desire; with both theoretical and practical
reasoning. Together with the shift from a focus on truth, to that on
probability, there really are no barriers other than tradition and research
culture to prevent a full integration of the psychology of reasoning and
decision making. Of course, my preferred dual-processing approach is not
the only one that can and is being made in the effort to integrate reasoning
and decision making. In particular, Mike Oaksford and Nick Chater
(Oaksford & Chater, 2007, 2010) have been working for some time towards
an integrated approach to reasoning and decision making based on a
common normative (and computational level) theory of Bayesianism and
with little attention (until very recently) to dual processes. Like me, they
believe the use of different normative systems to have been a factor in
separating the two. Their solution—to have a single normative theory for
both—obviously differs radically from my preference to move away from
normative systems altogether. I am also not convinced by their suggestion
that the dual-process distinction is needed only at the algorithmic and not
computational level of analysis (Oaksford & Chater, 2011). Why would two
systems (or minds, see below) have evolved to compute the same functions?
Only time will tell which of these approaches will work best, but at least we
are agreed, as are other advocates of the new paradigm (e.g., Bonnefon,
2011; Over, 2009) that integration of the literatures on reasoning and
decision making is another essential objective for the future.
WHERE ARE WE GOING WITH DUAL-PROCESS THEORIES?

My various allusions to dual-process theories to date might have created the
impression that I think all is well with such accounts. Sadly, this is not the
case. There are a number of problems with this approach that need to be
dealt with if it is to take us forward. First, however, some historical

observations. It seems to me that some major theories of reasoning,
especially those based on mental logic and semantic mental models, were
born of the old logicist paradigm and have some trouble adjusting to the
new. This is because they were designed primarily as theories of deduction
although, as indicated, the model theory has been applied to other kinds of
reasoning (Johnson-Laird, 2006). By contrast, the dual-process theory of
reasoning (or more accurately the family of dual-process theories) has
adapted itself from the old to the new and seems more influential now than
in times past. How did this happen?
My own dual-process theorising had two separate origins, both in the
1970s, and both rooted in old paradigm. One was the observation that
both logical and non-logical factors influenced reasoning tasks in a
seemingly orthogonal manner (Evans, 1977) leading to a descriptive two-
factor theory of reasoning (Evans, 1982; making an apparent comeback in
the form of recent ‘‘dual source’’ models, such as that of Klauer, Beller, &
Hutter, 2010). The other was the observation that people gave logical-
sounding explanations for selection card choices that were demonstrably
determined by matching bias (Wason & Evans, 1975; recently replicated by
Lucas & Ball, 2005). These foundations led to the heuristic-analytic theory
(Evans, 1989) in which heuristic processes were largely blamed for biases,
and analytic processes largely praised for correct reasoning. The next
version (Evans & Over, 1996) was starting to shift in the direction of the
new paradigm, but still retained an emphasis on normative theory in Type
2 processing. However, my recent reformulations of the heuristic-analytic
theory (Evans, 2006, 2007a) broke this linkage. In this version cognitive
biases are attributed equally to Type 1 and 2 processing, and the latter is
now defined by manipulation of explicit representations through working
memory. In a similar way, Stanovich and West’s earlier dual-processing
account of individual differences in reasoning and decision making
(Stanovich, 1999; Stanovich & West, 2000) had an old-paradigm emphasis
on the link between Type 2 processing and normatively correct
performance. More recently Stanovich (2011b) has proposed a much
more complex relation between the two. His publications with West have
22 EVANS
also contributed strongly towards the effort to provide integrated accounts

of reasoning and decision making.
Dual-process theories of deductive reasoning originally attempted to find
a theoretical basis for the observed competition between logical and non-
logical processing in paradigms such as syllogistic belief bias (Evans,
Barston, & Pollard, 1983; Klauer, Musch, & Naumer, 2000), supported
recently by neuroscientific evidence of distinct brain regions involved in
processing abstract and belief-laden stimuli and in the detection and
resolution of conflict between logical form and belief (De Neys, Vartanian,
& Goel, 2008; Goel, 2008; Goel & Dolan, 2003; Tsujii & Watanabee, 2009).
In the new paradigm, however, logical reasoning is regarded by many as no
more than a formal task to which Type 2 processing is applied under
instruction; it is these instructions that can create a conflict with belief
(Evans et al., 2010). Also, content and context effects are no longer regarded
as the sole province of Type 1 processing and are known also to affect Type
2 processing, but in a different way (Evans, Handley, & Harper, 2001;
Klauer et al., 2000; Verschueren, Schaeken, & d’Ydewalle, 2005). However,
there remains a significant difference between myself and Stanovich on the
topic of normative theory (Evans & Elqayam, 2011; Stanovich, 2011a). He
still thinks it very important to determine the correctness of reasoning and
decision making, drawing on multiple normative models to do so.
While the transition from dual-process theorising in old and new
paradigms has felt smooth and seamless for me personally, that is not my
perception of what has been happening the in the field as a whole.
Significant bits of old paradigm thinking have stuck to ‘‘the’’ theory,
creating belief in a generic or received version of the theory that incorporates
a number of false beliefs when viewed from the standpoint of contemporary
theory and research in the field. I have recently (Evans, in press a) identified
five significant such ‘‘fallacies’’ as follows:
1. All dual-process theories are essentially the same.

2. There are just two systems underlying Type 1 and 2 processing.
3. Type 1 processes are responsible for cognitive biases; Type 2
processes for normatively correct responding.
4. Type 1 processing is contextualised while Type 2 processing is
abstract.
5. Fast processing indicates the use of a Type 1 rather than Type 2
process.
The tendency to refer to dual-process theory (singular) is a gift to critics

(e.g., Keren & Schul, 2009; Kruglanski & Gigerenzer, 2011) who like to
point to weaknesses or ambiguities in some accounts as a reason to discredit
the whole movement. But even intentionally friendly authors are prone to
draw on this received version and its inherent fallacies. There is in fact no
singular or agreed version of dual-process theory. There is a tendency to
confuse theories that propose two modes or styles of thinking, from two
distinct types based on different cognitive systems (see Evans, 2010a, 2011).
I only count the latter as true dual-process theories, but the former
(common in social psychology) are a source of confusion and fuel some of
the critiques. Types of processing are distinct, but modes can be continuous.
Types are linked to cognitive architecture; modes can relate to differences in
personality and culture and so on. Even within type theories there is a clear
architectural division between those accounts that I describe as ‘‘default-

interventionist’’ and ‘‘parallel-competitive’’ (Evans, 2007b). In one view,
intuition operates rapidly to provide default representations and responses
that may or may not be intervened upon by subsequent reflective thinking
(e.g., Evans, 2006, 2007a; Kahneman & Frederick, 2002; Stanovich, 1999,
2011b); in the other, intuition and reflection proceed in parallel, each
providing a response that may or may not conflict (e.g., Sloman, 1996;
Smith & DeCoster, 2000). There can be no justification for lumping these
different accounts together in one received version.
Proceeding briefly down the list of fallacies, the next is that suggested by
the popular System 1 and 2 labels, i.e., that System 1 is responsible for Type
1 processing and System 2 for Type 2 processing. The trouble here is that
there are clearly multiple cognitive systems underlying the performance
observed in dual-process tasks. It is quite impossible that there are just two
systems in the brain/mind responsible for all the kinds of processing
described as Type 1 and 2. Hence recent theorising has attributed dual
processing to distinct minds with differing evolutionary histories, each of
which has multiple systems (Evans, 2010b; Stanovich, 2011b). Fallacies 3
and 4 have been clearly exposed by empirical studies over the past decade
and are again clearly refuted in the recent writings of Stanovich and myself.
Both Type 1 and 2 processing can lead to ‘‘good’’ or normative answers and
both can be involve in cognitive biases (for extensive discussion see Evans,
2007a). Recent models also recognise that beliefs and context can influence
Type 2 as well as Type 1 processing (Evans et al., 2001; Klauer et al., 2000;
Verschueren et al., 2005; Weidenfeld, Oberauer, & Hornig, 2005). The
former may be represented as continuous degrees of associative belief, and
the latter as all-or-none consideration of counterexamples that come to
mind, based on prior knowledge. Finally, thinking is not necessarily Type 1
or intuitive just because it is quick: with experience we may adopt quick and
dirty heuristics which are still explicitly applied by Type 2 processing (see
Evans, 2010b, Ch. 4).
Given the current somewhat confused state of theorising, there is some
justification for the recent critiques of dual-process theories. But what the
critics rarely mention is the wealth of evidence from both experimental
24 EVANS
and neuroscientific studies that demonstrates across many fields of

psychology that the mind can operate in two distinct ways (Evans,
2010b; Stanovich, 2011b). This evidence is extremely hard to reconcile
with any single-process approach. So how are we to proceed? My own
view is that we need to construct our theoretical accounts at three
different levels. While the current fashion for very precise modelling of
data sets (see the majority of papers published in Psychological Review in
recent years) is worthy, it is not enough. We see a small piece in accurate
detail, but not the wider picture. And resolving theoretical issues with
only this perspective is very difficult. Take the example of the recent
debate about belief bias. On the basis of a signal detection analysis that
(curiously) treats validity as a continuously distributed signal to be
detected, Dube, Rotello, and Heit (2010) claimed that belief bias in
syllogistic reasoning is just a response bias, contradicting my above claims
that it has both Type 1 and 2 components. Their conclusions have been
disputed by Klauer and Kellen (2011) in a technical argument about the
shape of ROC curves.
From my perspective an argument like this cannot be satisfactorily
resolved simply at the level of the technicalities of model fits. I am a
Bayesian scientist (and no Popperian), and as such I bring prior beliefs to
the evaluation of any particular evidence. Everything that I know and
understand about belief bias, dual processes, and mental architecture based
on years of empirical study and hard thinking leads me to be very sceptical
about the claims of Dube et al. You can also throw into the Bayesian mix
my scepticism about mathematical psychology and model fitting. I need a
higher and broader view of events and so, I argue, does the field as a whole.
In addition to theories of tasks and experiments, we also need high-level
theories of the mind and what I call intermediate-level theorising. It is
simply no good having a number of precise models fitting locally to the
findings of particular experimental studies, if there is no consistent and
plausible global theory within which they can all make sense.
The search for a high-level account led me to the two minds theory, and a
survey of evidence across almost the whole of psychology, taking in
evolution, learning and memory, reasoning and decision making, social
cognition, emotion, consciousness studies, and many neuropsychological
studies (Evans, 2010b). The problem to be solved was: why do dual-process
accounts turn up consistently in so many different fields of psychology? The
proposed solution is that we have two distinct minds, one of which evolved
much more recently than the other (for discussion of many precursors see
also Frankish & Evans, 2009; Stanovich, 2004). Lots of local dual-process
theories make far more sense with this global model. However, one cannot
go straight from such a high-level theory to construction of a model of
particular tasks and paradigms. That is why we also need intermediate-level
theories that bridge the gap. This was the explicit purpose of my theory of
hypothetical thinking incorporating a revision of my earlier heuristic-
analytic theory (Evans, 2006, 2007a). This provides a framework for
theorising about explicit reasoning and decision-making tasks. However, it
needs improvement and development, and this is where my current
theoretical efforts are focused (for a start on this, see Evans, 2011).
I have little doubt, in principle, that dual-process theory has a well-
justified and indeed crucial role to play in the new paradigm psychology of
reasoning. However, I am very concerned about the casual use of the
received view of the theory by apparent supporters as well as critics of the

dual-process approach. If the critics prevail, we will be left with myopic one-
process accounts of particular tasks, making construction of even
intermediate-level theories of reasoning very difficult indeed. In the long
run I believe the critics will fail because the evidence, especially that
accumulating from neural-imaging studies (e.g., Goel, 2005; Lieberman,
2007), will not support single-process accounts. But if dual-process
researchers do not get their theoretical act together, we could be in for a
period of confusion and lack of progress in the short term. Related to this
both I (Evans, 2011) and Stanovich, West, and Toplak (2011) have recently
argued that those seeking to test dual-process theories with studies of
cognitive development are prone to make simplistic assumptions about what
‘‘the’’ theory is and what predictions it generates. As is generally the case,
testing dual-process theories is a complex endeavour that requires the
clearest of theoretical thinking.
CONCLUSIONS
I agree with others that there is a new psychology of reasoning in which
many (but not all) of the inheritors of the deduction paradigm are now
engaged, including certainly myself and my collaborators. There has been a
paradigm shift, although it is unclear whether this is yet complete or settled.
And it has been change for the good, in that the questions now asked and
the methods now employed set the field squarely in the broader cognitive
psychology paradigm, addressing fundamental questions about cognitive
architecture and function. In particular, the facilitation of a common
theoretical approach to human reasoning and decision making is much to be
welcomed.
However, I have set out here a number of questions and challenges for
the new paradigm. First, we need to decide whether, in abandoning
extensional logic as our main normative framework for the study of
reasoning, we are to turn to a more descriptive approach or whether we need
adopt an alternative normative system. While there seems to be a consensus
that Bayesian decision theory can provide an appropriate computational
26 EVANS
system for the new paradigm, it is far less evident whether we should also
regard it as an arbiter of good and bad reasoning. Second, we need to ask
ourselves: if we are no longer studying deduction, then with what kind of
reasoning are we concerned? If the new psychology of reasoning is to be
linked with inductive and probabilistic reasoning, for example, then how
does it connect with a number of other psychological literatures, with their
own histories and traditions that seem to relate to the same topics? Next, I
addressed the question of just how we can connect the psychologies of
reasoning and decision making, which seems to be an objective for many
new psychologists of reasoning. We first need to recognise that the new

psychology of reasoning concerns practical as well as epistemic goals:
people compute beliefs but they also compute actions. I have suggested
that a dual-process framework recognising common intuitive and reflective
processes in both traditions will be helpful to this enterprise, but recognise
the value of other approaches in the new psychology of reasoning. I have
also shown that there are problems to be dealt with in the dual-process
approach, as a careless use of a received version can only provide further
fuel for the mounting number of critics of the approach. Finally, I have
stressed the need for the development of high- and intermediate-level
theories as well as those aimed more precisely at modelling behaviour on
individual tasks.
It is not my purpose to belittle the ‘‘old’’ paradigm, within which I worked
myself for many years. Despite its limitations, huge amounts of theoretical
progress in understanding higher cognitive processes were achieved between
1960 and 2000. The paradigm arose for good historical reasons and it was
necessary to test it, as it turned out, to destruction. This 40-year period is also
testament to the limitations of a priori thinking in the absence of empirical
test. The logicism that inspired the deduction paradigm was handed down by
generations of clever and hard-thinking philosophers. But no amount of
thought about how things ought to be in nature is a substitute for rigorous
empirical study of how they actually are. That is why so many contemporary
philosophers of mind inform themselves in great detail about the results of
psychological and neuroscientific studies (for an outstanding example, see
Carruthers, 2006). But just as philosophers need empirical insight, so
psychologists need strong and clear thinking about what they are doing. The
paradigm shift we are seeing in the psychology of reasoning was bound to
happen because nature just would not be accommodated within the old
paradigm. But it behoves us as psychologists to formulate a clear philosophy
of the science in which we are now engaged. I hope that the challenges I have
laid out can help to move us in this direction.
Manuscript received 18 August 2011

Revised manuscript received 18 October 2011
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Questions and challenges for the new psychology of

Jonathan St. B. T. Evans

School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK

Keywords: Deductive reasoning; New paradigm; Dual-process theory.

The psychology of reasoning, or more accurately a particular community

Correspondence should be addressed to Jonathan St. B. T. Evans, School of Psychology,

casual reasoning, counterfactual reasoning, and so on. The identity crisis

identity and paradigms, I authored a review some 10 years later (Evans,

however, it seems inappropriate to continue to call our research ﬁeld the

moving, towards a new paradigm psychology of reasoning that frees us from

2007a; Stanovich, 2011b). The linkage between cognitive ability and

their own perspective. In contrast with more formal measures of reasoning,

DO WE NEED NORMATIVE SYSTEMS?

the propositional calculus in which all statements are deemed to be either

of high IQ were more likely to give the standard normative answer on a

normative concepts at all? Model theory, for example, describes a system of

ARE THERE DIFFERENT KINDS OF REASONING?

the theory, we revise it by a further process of induction and so on.

communities might not want us in their clubs either. But we have a

speculation about which creatures have imaginary features like sesamoid

in deduction tradition when pragmatic reasoning instructions are required

processing by contrast is rapid and low eﬀort, and may be based on

JUST EXACTLY HOW DO THE PSYCHOLOGIES OF

ﬁeld that are more focused on questions about cognitive processing. A

The question addressed in this section is clearly related to that discussed

proposed that metacognitive feelings of rightness (FOR) in initial decisions

decision making, beliefs have long been represented as probabilities. In the

The normative systems employed—in the old paradigm psychology of

WHERE ARE WE GOING WITH DUAL-PROCESS THEORIES?

dealt with if it is to take us forward. First, however, some historical

also contributed strongly towards the eﬀort to provide integrated accounts

1. All dual-process theories are essentially the same.

The tendency to refer to dual-process theory (singular) is a gift to critics

architectural division between those accounts that I describe as ‘‘default-

and neuroscientiﬁc studies that demonstrates across many ﬁelds of

received view of the theory by apparent supporters as well as critics of the

new psychologists of reasoning. We ﬁrst need to recognise that the new

Manuscript received 18 August 2011

Bonnefon, J. B. (2009). A theory of utility conditionals: Paralogical reasoning from decision-

Evans, J. St. B. T. (2007b). On the resolution of conﬂict in dual-process theories of reasoning.

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