The Behavioural Reflection Test: A time-efficient measure of reflective reasoning in morally and epistemically charged decisions

2026-07-08

AI Summary

This study addresses the declining validity of the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) due to overexposure and its limited capacity to capture reflective decision-making and linguistic markers in morally and cognitively complex contexts. To overcome these limitations, we propose the Behavioral Reflection Test (BRT), which innovatively integrates a low-exposure, four-item bespoke CRT (bCRT) with an open-ended moral–cognitive challenge task. Designed for efficiency (median completion time: 11.8 minutes), the BRT effectively measures higher-order reflective capacities—including sensitivity to evidence, ethical motivation, and reliance on high-quality information sources—alongside their linguistic correlates. In a sample of 473 adults, online experimentation, psychometric validation, natural language processing, and item response theory analyses demonstrate that the bCRT significantly predicts superior decision quality and distinctive language features, exhibiting strong convergent validity, efficiency, and cross-domain applicability.

Abstract

How readily people override intuitive conclusions through reflection shapes how they navigate dense information environments with reliable and misleading sources; yet the effectiveness of a prominent measure, the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), is eroded by widespread exposure to classic items and leaves open how such tendencies manifest more generally in decision style and linguistic expression. The Behavioural Reflection Test (BRT) addresses these issues with a brief open-ended measure of reasoning in morally and epistemically charged scenarios, alongside a four-item bespoke CRT (bCRT) as a low-exposure anchor. Among 473 online adults, higher bCRT predicted more evidence-sensitive, ethically driven decisions and reliance on high-quality sources, marked by more emotionally engaged, risk-attentive, economical language; associations the familiarity-adjusted CRT did not recover. The bCRT showed convergent validity, added item information above mean ability. Though open-ended, the BRT remained a time-efficient (median 11.8 minutes) behavioural assay of reflection with scope to extend across domains.

Problem

• Cognitive Reflection Test
• reflective reasoning
• morally charged decisions
• epistemically charged decisions
• decision style

Innovation

• Behavioural Reflection Test
• cognitive reflection
• open-ended reasoning
• moral decision-making
• epistemic reasoning