Types of Cognitive Content and the Role of Relational Processing in the Illusion of Explanatory Depth

Types of Cognitive Content and the Role of Relational Processing in the Illusion of Explanatory Depth Graham Silk-Eglit (gsilkeg1@binghamton.edu) Kenneth J. Kurtz (kkurtz@binghamton.edu) Department of Psychology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York 13902 occurred as a result of participants misconstruing the initial rating prompt as pertaining to a cognitively different set of content than was relevant to their proceeding explanatory task. Second, we sought to show that people had more explanatory knowledge than they demonstrated – causing them to underestimate their post-explanation knowledge. Specifically, we expected that participants would be able to articulate more causal knowledge if they were encouraged to draw comparisons between the stimuli and a relevantly similar second domain. Abstract Rozenblit and Keil (2002) claim that people are subject to an illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) whereby they believe they understand the world in greater detail, coherence and depth than they actually do. In the present research, we questioned Rozenblit and Keil’s conclusions in two ways. First, we tested whether people might overestimate their explanatory knowledge as a result of misconstruing how to initially rate their understanding of stimuli. We found that when directed to consider the physical-mechanical processes of stimuli instead of their functional affordances, participants did in fact offer more accurate estimates of understanding relative to their explanatory performance. Second, we tested whether the explanations participants proffer are misleadingly shallow. We predicted that by encouraging a more relational encoding of stimuli, participants would be able to produce better explanations. However, the results showed that participants’ explanations remained shallow after relationally encoding stimuli. Types of cognitive content One of the features that distinguishes knowledge of complex causal systems from other forms of knowledge is that complex causal systems are composed of distinct types of cognitive content. A device, for instance, can be described in terms of its functions, consequences and global appearance, or in terms of its components and the causal relations among them. Accordingly, while people may understand a given device’s functional properties well, they may be less knowledgeable about its physical-mechanical processes. As such, judgments of understanding that confuse these two types of cognitive content are potentially susceptible to metacognitive miscalibrations. In this manner, an illusion of explanatory depth might arise from a discrepancy in the type of cognitive content that people use in order to make their judgments of understanding before and after proffering an explanation. This, we claim, is precisely what occurs in Rozenblit and Keil’s (2002) study (see also Alter, Oppenheimer & Zemla, 2010). In order to describe how a given object works, Rozenblit and Keil require participants to explain that object physical-mechanically in terms of its components and the causal relations among them. As such, post-explanation ratings, made in light of performance on this causal explanatory task, index participants’ knowledge of physical- mechanical processes. However, Rozenblit and Keil fail to explicitly specify which sort of cognitive content their participants should estimate their initial, pre-explanation understandings of stimuli on – making their instructions potentially ambiguous. Rozenblit and Keil merely instruct participants “to rate on a 7-point scale how well you feel you understand each one” (p. 39). Consequently, the metacognitive miscalibration of the IOED may be an artifact of these ambiguous instructions. Specifically, Rozenblit and Keywords: illusion of explanatory depth; analogical reasoning; modes of explanation; concepts and categories. Introduction Recent research has suggested that people often overestimate their ability to explain causally complex systems. In a recent study, Rozenblit and Keil (2002) asked participants to rate their understanding of devices both before and after proffering explanations of how those devices work. They found that people consistently overrated their understanding – displaying a significant drop between their pre-explanation and post-explanation ratings. Further analyses revealed that this overestimation was not a result of general overconfidence but was specific to causally complex systems; when tested with other, non-explanatory forms of knowledge—i.e., knowledge of facts, procedures, and narratives—this illusion of knowing was either absent (for procedures) or greatly diminished (for facts and narratives). Thus, Rozenblit and Keil argued that people are subject to an illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) wherein they have inflated metacognitive beliefs of their ability to explain causal phenomena yet possess only shallow understandings of the causal workings of those phenomena. In the current study, we set out to question Rozenblit and Keil’s (2002) argument in two ways. First, we intended to show that people were biased to overestimate their pre- explanation ratings of understanding. We believe this