Folk Thinking, Fast and Slow: Intuitive Preference for Deliberation in Humans and Machines
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Influential models conceive human thinking as an interplay between intuition and deliberation. Yet, it’s unclear how people actually perceive these types of reasoning. Across 13 studies (total N = 3066), we examined whether humans—and large language models (LLMs)—favor intuition or deliberation. Participants rated individuals' reasoning quality in short vignettes that varied by reasoning type (fast-intuitive vs. slow-deliberative) and past accuracy (high, low, unspecified). Consistently, participants rated deliberative reasoning as superior to intuition, regardless of accuracy. Deliberative thinkers were seen as smarter and more trustworthy—a preference that held even under time pressure and cognitive load, suggesting it arises intuitively. Studies with LLMs (ChatGPT 3.5 and 4) replicated the human preference pattern, indicating that AI language models capture human folk beliefs about reasoning. These findings suggest a strong intuitive link between deliberation and reliability, with critical implications for public trust in human and AI recommendations.
