Great Minds do not Think Alike: Philosophers’ Views Predicted by Reflection, Education, Personality, and Other Demographic Differences

Abstract

Prior research found correlations between reflection test performance and philosophical tendencies among laypeople. In two large studies (total N = 1299)-one pre-registered-many of these correlations were replicated in a sample that included both laypeople and philosophers. For example, reflection test performance predicted preferring atheism over theism and instrumental harm over harm avoidance on the trolley problem. However, most reflection-philosophy correlations were undetected when controlling for other factors such as numeracy, preferences for open-minded thinking, personality, philosophical training, age, and gender. Nonetheless, some correlations between reflection and philosophical views survived this multivariate analysis and were only partially confounded with either education or self-reported reasoning preferences. Unreflective thinking still predicted believing in God whereas reflective thinking still predicted believing that (a) proper names like 'Santa' do not necessarily refer to entities that actually exist and (b) science does reveal the fundamental nature of the world. So some robust relationships between reflection and philosophical tendencies were detected even among philosophers, and yet there was clearly more to the link between reflection and philosophy. To this end, demographic and metaphilosophical hypotheses are considered.

Does Studying Philosophy Make People Better Thinkers?

“…Nick Byrd (2022) recently conducted a study that found that certain intellectual traits correlate with the philosophical views that people hold. Because his data are publicly available (https://osf.io/a98ck/), we were also able to reanalyze them in order to investigate questions that he did not.…”

Analytic Atheism & Analytic Apostasy Across Cultures

“…Novel reflection test. To dissociate reflection from reflection test familiarity (Byrd, 2023b), we used novel adaptations of the "nurse", "race", and "tea" test questions from Calvillo et al (2023, Appendix and Supplement). As intended, participants' perceived test familiarity was not related to their performance.…”

“…As such they may wonder whether these reflective religionists simply do not make it into the studies that find reflective thinking correlating with atheism or agnosticism (Pennycook et al, 2016). However, even studies including academic philosophers find moderate correlations between reflection and atheism (Byrd, 2023b). This suggests that links between reflection and areligiosity may be somewhat prevalent.…”

Tell Us What You Really Think: A Think Aloud Protocol Analysis of the Verbal Cognitive Reflection Test

“…Sirota and colleagues (2021) developed and validated a new, 10-item, non-mathematical variant of Shane Frederick and colleagues' (Frederick 2005;Kahneman and Frederick 2002) well-known (mathematical) cognitive reflection test (mCRT) to address familiarity and numeracy problems (Byrd 2022d). One item from Sirota and colleagues' verbal cognitive reflection test (or vCRT for short) is the opening example: "If you were running a race, and you passed the person in 2nd place, what place would you be in now?"…”

“…Test familiarity. Prior work found that many participants were already familiar with reflection test questions and that such familiarity may be the best predictor of reflection test performance (Byrd 2022d;Stieger and Reips 2016). So the raters also rated whether each participant mentioned being familiar with any of the vCRT items (Light's K = 0.82).…”