Research within the field of cognitive psychology has traditionally been aimed at investigating relatively isolated cognitive processes, with the goal of elucidating the efficacy of information processing. However, in recent years the relevance of considering the role of cognitive styles in cognitive functioning has been recognized, which was also explored within the current study. Specifically, the goal of the present study was to investigate the contributions of cognitive reflection and cognitive styles that include the need for cognition, faith in intuition, maximizing and superstitious thinking to explaining participants’ efficacy in solving several cognitive tasks. These included convergent thinking, syllogistic reasoning and two tasks used for exploring heuristical thinking, namely the covariation detection and causal baserate tasks. The obtained results indicated cognitive reflection as a statistically significant predictor of convergent thinking, syllogistic reasoning and the covariation detection task, whereas faith in intuition and need for cognition were identified as significant predictors of convergent thinking and the causal baserate task. The obtained results corroborate and extend previous findings in this field, indicating the relevance of understanding individual differences in individuals’ cognitive functioning.

heuristical thinking, cognitive reflection, convergent thinking, maximizing, need for cognition, faith in intuition