The importance and subtleties of cognitive ease

On how familiarity breeds acceptance and the perhaps unexpected consequences : why learning doesn't always feel good, why intuitive thinking is often beneficial and more enjoyable, but why we sometimes need to avoid it.. 10 minute video, here are some highlights from the transcript.

Research has shown that, if you're repeatedly exposed to the phrase: "The body temperature of a chicken."...even if no useful information is given about the body temperature of a chicken, you are more likely to judge as true this statement: "the body temperature of a chicken is 34 degrees Celsius." It's not, by the way, it's actually closer to 41.

The things we're exposed to repeatedly feel more true. Now, the way this seems to work is through a mechanism called cognitive ease. Cognitive ease is a measure of how hard your brain is working.

Like "fire is hot", "earth revolves around the sun", "dogs have four legs", and so on. Not only do these things feel true, they also feel familiar. Effortless. And they feel good. All of these are outcomes of cognitive ease. Now, the trouble arises because cognitive ease can be artificially created in other ways.

One way is just by repeating the stimulus... But repetition is not the only way to create cognitive ease. Images with higher contrast are perceived by the brain with more cognitive ease, making them feel good, which explains most of the Instagram filters. In another study, people who were shown images where the outline was projected quickly and imperceptibly before the image, they started to smile and relax their brows as measured by electrodes on these muscles.

[In text], studies have shown that people will often choose the more legible answer : nice, contrasting bold text is easier and quicker to read, it's handled with more cognitive ease, and is therefore judged to be more true. Lawyers with easily pronounced last names, are over-represented, higher up the chain in law firms, even controlling for rarity and ethnicity of the names. And even companies that have pronounceable abbreviations on the stock market out-perform those with unpronounceable tags.

Which is also why galaxy catalogues ought to do away with the stupid telephone -number entries (e.g. SDSSJ123402+091706) whenever possible.

And being happy, in fact, that makes you more likely to experience cognitive ease as well. This, in turn, makes you more intuitive.

A test using a similar set of three questions found that 90% of people made at least one mistake when the questions printed clearly. But when a test was printed like this [less legibly], the error rate dropped to 35%. Making the test harder to read actually INCREASED the accuracy of results. This is because the illegible text creates cognitive strain, forcing your brain to work harder, and that helps avoid the pitfall and jumping to the intuitive, but wrong answer.

Couldn't it be just because you have to take extra time to work things out, so the brain is able to use higher-level reasoning than intuition ? I suppose it might be possible to control for this in some way.

Cognitive ease is useful for being creative and intuitive but it also makes you more gullible. So for the written part of your driving test, going with your gut is probably a good strategy. But in areas like Physics where the answers are counter-intuitive and there are many common misconceptions, it's important to be more skeptical. This vigilance takes effort. And it's also associated with being... unhappy.

Have you ever noticed that some of the best scientists and analytical minds are grumpy and suspicious of everything? I mean I think this could be more than just poor social skills : it may be essential for them to do their job. And this is a paradox of learning and critical thinking.

Cognitive ease is pleasant. It is effortless, familiar, and it really does make you more creative and intuitive. But it can also trick you. It may make things SEEM true that aren't, and you may feel like you're learning when you're not. On the other hand, being skeptical and analytical takes more mental work. It's more confusing and it doesn't feel it's good, but... it's the best way to separate fact from fiction.

There are definitely times when cognitive ease is the appropriate mental state. When we evolved it for a reason, so we can react intuitively in familiar everyday situations. Why think harder than you have to ? So the key is to identify those times when more thought is required. But with sharing and repeating ideas, easier than ever before, I think we need to be more vigilant, to distinguish between those things that are really true and those we simply have heard many times before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cebFWOlx848