On the Distinction Between Rationality and Intelligence: Implications for Understanding Individual Differences in Reasoning
Abstract A concern for individual differences has been missing from the Great Rationality Debate in cognitive science—the debate about how much irrationality to attribute to human cognition. There are individual differences in rational thinking that are less than perfectly correlated with individual differences in intelligence because intelligence and rationality occupy different conceptual locations in models of cognition. A tripartite extension of currently popular dual-process theories is presented in this chapter that illustrates how intelligence and rationality are theoretically separate concepts. The chapter concludes by showing how this tripartite model of mind, taken in the context of studies of individual differences, can help to resolve the Great Rationality Debate.