Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-GENERAL
Volume 144, Issue 2, Pages E16-E30Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/xge0000049
Keywords
fluency; disfluency; dual-system processing; reasoning; judgment
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Prior research suggests that reducing font clarity can cause people to consider printed information more carefully. The most famous demonstration showed that participants were more likely to solve counter-intuitive math problems when they were printed in hard-to-read font. However, after pooling data from that experiment with 16 attempts to replicate it, we find no effect on solution rates. We examine potential moderating variables, including cognitive ability, presentation format, and experimental setting, but we find no evidence of a disfluent font benefit under any conditions. More generally, though disfluent fonts slightly increase response times, we find little evidence that they activate analytic reasoning.
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