Jonathan Baron’s scientific contributions

D. Duemler and R. E. Mayer (see record 1989-14366-001) claimed to have found evidence against my theory of rational thinking (J. Baron, 1985), which they interpreted as saying that more reflective thinking is always better. They claimed to show that the most reflective subjects do worse in a task that requires generation of unusual hypotheses. The theory itself, however, implies that people can be too reflective. Their data do not test even this implication adequately because their measure of reflectiveness is very likely invalid.