Toward a Physiology of Dual-Process Reasoning and Judgment: Lemonade, Willpower, and Expensive Rule-Based Analysis

“Alternative models of reasoning have characterized System 2 processes primarily as logical (De Neys, 2006; Epstein, 1994) or based on the application of rules (Sloman, 1996).”

“Four studies reporting five separate effect sizes were included in the analysis (DeWall et al., 2008; Gailliot, Baumeister, et al., 2007; Gailliot et al., 2009; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“Our interest ranges broadly, from tasks such as the Stroop (Webb & Sheeran 2003) to math problems (Arai 1912) and complex decision making (Masicampo & Baumeister 2008; Vohs et al. 2008).”

“At the same time, several experiments have now found that consuming (e.g., Denson, von Hippel, Kemp, & Teo, 2010) or simply gurgling (Molden et al., in press) glucose-laden beverages enhances self-control and eliminates the ego depletion effect (e.g., Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“Specifically, as mentioned briefly above, Baumeister and colleagues (Gailliot et al. 2007, Masicampo & Baumeister 2008) have proposed that the resource underlying behavioral depletion effects and related phenomena is in fact blood glucose.”

“Masicampo and Baumeister (2008) also found that consuming glucose (drinking lemonade) eliminated more heuristic decision making amongst fatigued participants but drinking lemonade with artificial sweeteners had no impact.”

“It has been hypothesized that individuals who are more attentionally fatigued may obtain greater benefits from interacting with nature (Kaplan and Berman, 2010), and fatigued participants have been found to gain greater benefits from other types of interventions (Masicampo and Baumeister, 2008).”

“By grounding our model in theories of self-regulatory resources, we identify a primary motivational mechanism of deviant behavior and extend recently surfacing evidence regarding the physiological bases of self-regulation (Gailliot et al., 2007; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“Some researchers have argued that control capacity can also be boosted by consuming glucose (Gailliot et al., 2007; Heatherton & Wagner, 2011; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008), although this hypothesis has been doubted recently.”

“If stress interferes with processing resources required by the brain’s executive systems, it is plausible that this would lead to an exaggerated reliance on lower-level automatized systems ( Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008 ).”

“…later loss of self-control, as evidenced by inappropriate aggressive responding (DeWall, Baumeister, Stillman, & Gailliot, 2007), over-eating (Vohs & Heatherton, 2000), overreliance on heuristics to make decisions (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008), and unfocused attention (Inzlicht & Gutsell, 2007).”

“…deliberate “System 2” processes, and a large body of empirical evidence has demonstrated that System 1 processes exert significant influence on judgment and decision making (Gigerenzer and Goldstein, 1996; Greene et al., 2001; Masicampo and Baumeister, 2008; Kahneman, 2011; Rand et al., 2012).”

“…(Gailliot & Baumeister, 2007): Studies have suggested that just as muscles metabolize simple carbohydrates as their primary fuel, selfcontrol may also rely on carbohydrate metabolization (Gailliot et al., 2007; Gailliot, Peruche, Plant, & Baumeister, 2009; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“…previously exerted self-regulation has been replicated with helpfulness (Gailliot, Baumeister, et al., 2007), irrational biases in decision making (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008), depleting effects of uncertainty (Alquist et al., 2016), deducing rules for predicting events (McMahon & Scheel,…”

“In the 2 years following the above studies, the same research laboratory presented further experimental data in support of the glucose hypothesis (De Wall, Baumeister, Gailliot, & Maner, 2008; Gailliot, Peruche, Plant, & Baumeister, 2009; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“If stress interferes with cognitive systems, it is plausible that reduced cognitive control ability would lead to an exaggerated reliance on lower-level automatized systems (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“These effects on a variety of cognitive functions, such as learning and memory, appear to be driven by changes in the transmitter activity of the cholinergic system (see Messier 2004 for a review; Ragozzino et al 1996; Wenk 1989).”

“Whilst studies into ego-depletion indicate that this may be true (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008, but see Inzlicht, Schmeichel, & Macrae, 2014), these instructions were designed to limit participants' awareness that we were really looking at hunger state and food consumption.”

“Ego depletion interferes with the deliberative system and increases reliance on the intuitive system, leading to impulsive choices and intuitive decision making (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008; Vohs, 2006).”

“This alternative hypothesis is in line with recent work by Masicampo and Baumeister (2008), which showed that decision biases can be induced by depleting cognitive resources.”

“A recent development in the field has demonstrated that self-regulatory failure is coupled with decreases in the supply of glucose to the brain (Dvorak & Simons, 2009 ; Gailliot & Baumeister, 2007a ; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008 ).”

“Interestingly, these effects are not limited to humans [14–16], they increase after lesion of the medial orbitofrontal cortex in macaques [17], and they can be mitigated by improving self-control or increasing blood glucose [18].”

“Glucose likewise appears to be involved in these choices, as shown by the finding that a dose of glucose after self-control can reduce the tendency to follow an irrational short-cut to an easy decision (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“Indeed, Masicampo and Baumeister (2008) write: “we tested the hypothesis that more blood glucose (which serves as fuel for the brain) is needed for the effortful, rule-based [deliberate] process than for the less effortful [heuristic] process, so that the former type of decision making is impaired…”

“Other research has shown that consuming glucose (brain fuel) has a replenishing effect on depleted mental resources (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“…participants are more likely to give up in tasks requiring persistence (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998), shop impulsively (Vohs & Faber, 2007), rely on heuristics in decision making (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008), and cheat when reporting their own performance (Mead et al., 2009).”

“In addition, Masicampo and Baumeister (2008) demonstrated that depleted participants rely on System 1 thinking because they no longer have the mental resources that fueled System 2 processes.”

“…resource (willpower; Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998), which is dependent on a biological resource (glucose; Gailliot et al., 2007; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008), and dis-belief in free will serves as a cue not to bother exerting effortful control (Baumeister et al., 2009; Vohs &…”

“In contrast, the confidence heuristic implies an effortless intuitive process (Kahneman, 2003; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) in which confidence is used as a peripheral cue.”

“In addition, they also found that ingesting a glucose solution replenished selfcontrol capacity (Gailliot et al., 2007), a finding that has been subsequently replicated in numerous studies (e.g., DeWall, Baumeister, Gailliot, & Maner, 2008; Dvorak & Simons, 2009; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“…Baumeister, Gailliot, & Maner, 2008; Dickinson, McElroy, & Stroh, 2014; Gailliot et al., 2007; Gailliot, Peruche, Plant, & Baumeister, 2009; Howard & Marczinski, 2010; Job et al., 2013; Kelly et al., 2015; Lange & Eggert, 2014; Lange et al., 2014; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008; Wang & Dvorak, 2010).”

“Additionally, interventions that restore depleted resources also improve System 2 processing (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008), which suggests that caffeine may bolster executive control via increased System 2 processing.”

“Furthermore, a study by Masicampo and Baumeister (2008) provides evidence that people under stress tend to opt for automatic instead of controlled processes when making decisions.”

“In their study,Masicampo and Baumeister show how blood glucose interacts with the reliance on non-analytical reasoning [40].”

“…processes, which involve the complex process of overriding a strong impulse, consume a relatively large amount of glucose [e.g. Benton et al., 1994, 1996; DeWall et al., 2008; Fairclough and Houston, 2004; Gailliot and Baumeister, 2007; Gailliot et al., 2009; Masicampo and Baumeister, 2008].”

“Self-regulatory resources are also closely related to glucose (Gailliot and Baumeister, 2007; Gailliot et al., 2007; Masicampo and Baumeister, 2008).”

“Research has further revealed that effortful cognitive processing (e.g., logical reasoning, text comprehension, decision making) also relies on this resource ( Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008; Schmeichel, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2003).”

“The relevance of glucose to decision bias was established by Masicampo and Baumeister (2008).”

“This depletion task has been used successfully in past research to deplete self-regulatory resources (e.g., DeWall, Baumeister, Mead, & Vohs, 2011; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“The social psychology literature has distinct literatures on self-control (e.g., Baumeister & Exline, 2000; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008; Mischel & Ebbesen, 1970), on religious ritual (BeitHallahmi & Argyle, 1997; McCauley & Lawson, 2002; Stark, 2001), and on disease avoidance (Curtis et al., 2004;…”

“Masicampo and Baumeister (2008) found that ego depletion increased susceptibility to the effect.”

“, <brocas@usc.edu> and <juandc@usc.edu>.”

“Thus, heuristic-driven judgments result in predictable outcomes irrespective of context, whereas rule-based judgments vary across contexts (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008). compare with knowledge-driven ideal images (e.g., rules) to discern a path of action (Smith & DeCoster, 2000).”

“…add to the robustness of previously hibit lower performance in creativity tasks (Bayer et al., 2010), rely more on heuristics in decision making (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008), and even cheat when reporting their own performance (Mead et al., 2009). found ego-depletion effects, as our study…”

“One study has shown that glucose manipulations also influenced rational choice [ 50 ].”

“Thus, given that deliberate actions require cognitive-control resources, a state of depletion should increase automatic behavior (e.g., Vohs, 2006; Masicampo and Baumeister, 2008).”

“In this way, NeT is similar to other biologically-based limited-resource/depletion models of self-control (e.g. Masicampo and Baumeister 2008).”

“Individuals with exhausted mental resources experience greater diffi-culty with deliberation and rule-based analyses (DeWall, et al., 2008; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“Likewise, alterations in glucose levels have been associated with alterations in higher cognitive functions, including decisionmaking, self-control, and memory (Smith, Riby, Eekelen, & Foster, 2011; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008; however, see Kurzban, 2010; Wang & Dvorak, 2010).”

“During ego depletion, automatic and intuitive thinking processes remain largely intact, but people tend to make cognitive errors because the capacity for conscious, deliberate, complex thinking is hampered (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008; Pocheptsova, Amir, Dhar, & Baumeister, 2009).”

“Tyrosine levels were significantly lower in the high-carb/protein condition at 1130 hours [t(17) = 3.”

“In humans it can be attenuated by increasing blood glucose levels (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008), elaborating the descriptions of attributes (Ratneshwar, Shocker, & Stewart, 1987), and by increasing the difference in expected value between the two options (Farmer, 2014).”

“…for goal achievement, showing causal and correlational relationships with enhanced memory, logical reasoning, wise decision-making strategies, intelligent performance, and personal wealth (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008; Moffitt et al., 2011; Schmeichel, 2007; Schmeichel, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2003).”

“In line with the notion of adaptive decision making (Payne et al., 1988), we expected that the recognition heuristic would be more often used when cognitive resources are limited or, more specifically, when executive control is low (cf. Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“Based on the notion that cognitive load impairs deliberation and amplifies reliance on intuitive information processing (Masicampo and Baumeister 2008), we expect that the attraction effect will increase in magnitude with lower levels of serotonin induced by ATD.”

“Recent research argued that blood glucose is the biological resource underlying egodepletion.1 It was also found that glucose ingestion counteracted the ego-depletion effect (e.g. Gailliot et al., 2007; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“Note that systematic processing might be due to the fact that the environmental stimulus is low on cognitive effort, whereas making recourse to (effortless) heuristics might be a strategy to compensate for the fact that having urban pictures in view commands comparatively more cognitive effort [49].”

“On this view, mental effort tracks calorific depletion in the brain (Masicampo and Baumeister 2008).”

“…executive functioning act in line with their automatically activated evaluations of a stimulus object (e.g., Hofmann et al., 2008), suggesting that their behavior will be more in line with their impulses (e.g., to make a risky choice with a high potential payout; see Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”

“It has been argued that these reductions in brain glucose metabolism underlie functional defi cits following sleep deprivation because of resource depletion [ 58 – 60 ].”

“…2003), inappropriate aggressive responding (Stucke & Baumeister, 2006), overeating (Vohs & Heatherton, 2000), overreliance on heuristics to make decisions (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008), poor physical stamina (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998), and unfocused attention (Inzlicht & Gutsell, 2007).”