Gender Differences and Other Findings on the Cognitive Reflection Test

Intelligence is the traditional element of interest when measuring the human cognitive abilities. However, intelligence is complex and researchers are constantly finding new angles of looking at it. One such angle is reflective reasoning. Sometimes individuals choose to override the intuitive answer and by engaging in further reflection they reach the correct answer. The cognitive reflection test (CRT) measures a person’s ability to suppress their incorrect intuitive answer in favor of reflection that should then lead to the correct response. The test contains three short mathematically based problems, which measure, among others, cognitive ability, mathematical abilities and cognitive reflection. Using a sample of 195 students from a state university, one of the largest universities in Romania, we explore the extent to which a variety of phenomena and trends identified by previous findings on CRT show similar results on our sample.