Analyzing the Relationship Between Intellectual Aptitude and Susceptibility to Cognitive Illusions

Cognitive illusions—categorized into sensation, memory, judgment and decision-making, and self-perception tasks—exploit predictive processing to induce errors. In our study, we gave 46 online participants and 48 Governor’s School of New Jersey in the Sciences (GSNJS) scholars—a group of highly motivated and academically excelling high schoolers—a survey containing 16 cognitive illusions to analyze their effects. GSNJS scholars were equally susceptible to sensory and memory tasks, less susceptible to judgment tasks, and more susceptible to self-perception tasks. Our results suggest that while GSNJS scholars demonstrate better decision-making skills than the general population, they are still equally susceptible to most cognitive illusions.