Information-based and experience-based metacognitive judgments: Evidence from subjective confidence.

Dual-process theories have been very influential in social psychology and cognitive psychology. These theories postulate a distinction between two modes of thought that underlie judgment and behavior (see Chaiken & Trope, 1999; Kahneman & Frederick, 2005). Different labels have been proposed to describe the two modes (see Koriat, Bjork, Sheffer, & Bar, 2004): nonanalytic versus analytic (Jacoby & Brooks, 1984), associative versus rule based (Sloman, 1996), impulsive versus reflective (Strack & Deutsch, 2004), experiential versus rational (Epstein & Pacini, J999), and heuristic versus systematic (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989; Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). Although each of these labels emphasizes different aspects of the distinction, there is a general agreement that one mode of thought is fast, automatic, effortless, and implicit, whereas the other is slow, deliberate, effortful, and consciously monitored. Several researchers preferred to use the labels proposed by Stanovich and West (2000), System 1 versus System 2, which are more neutral. A similar dual-process framework has been proposed for the analysis of metacognitive monitoring, focusing on the qnestion of how people know that they know. 11,e distinction is between experience-based (EB) and information-based (IB) metacognitive judgments (Koriat, 2007; Koriat & Levy-Sadot, 1999; Strack, 1992). 11,econceptualization of this distinction brings to the fore specific features that may have some bearing for dual-process views in general. In the rest of the introduction, we first describe this distinction and then illustrate how it was applied in research on judgments of learning (JOLs) and feelings of knowing (FOKs). In the experimental parl of the chapter, we show how reliance on experience-driven and information-driven processes can yield diametrically opposed effects.