You’re faced with a tough question, maybe a work decision, a math puzzle, or what to say in a heated debate. Your gut pushes you to answer fast, confident, like the solution’s obvious. But then you hesitate, just for a second, to think it over. That tiny pause, barely noticeable, changes how people see you.
It signals thoughtfulness, smarts, and trustworthiness. And interestingly, even AI, like ChatGPT, seems to pick up on it.
Psychologists recently tested this very idea. In a study published in Communications Psychology, researchers across 13 studies asked more than 3,000 people to read short stories about characters facing tricky brain teasers. Some characters solved them with quick gut feelings (intuition), others took their time to think carefully (deliberation). The focus wasn’t on who got the answers right, but on how those people were judged.
The same stories were also fed to AI models like ChatGPT to see if they’d mimic human preferences.
Participants consistently preferred deliberation over quick intuition. As the researchers note, “Across 13 studies, we find a robust preference for deliberative over intuitive reasoning, even when accuracy is controlled and participants are under time pressure or cognitive load.” Slow, careful thinkers were rated as smarter, better at reasoning, and more trustworthy than those who relied on quick gut feelings.
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This preference held true even when both were equally accurate, for example, when both got 95% of the answers right, and when no information about accuracy was given.
Interestingly, the preference for deliberation seems to come through intuition itself. Even under pressure—when participants had just six seconds to judge or were asked to memorize random patterns while deciding, they still rated slow, careful thinkers as smarter and more trustworthy. This suggests that the bias isn’t a deliberate, calculated choice; it operates automatically.
When given the same stories, large language models like ChatGPT mirrored human judgments almost perfectly. ChatGPT gave higher scores to deliberative thinkers, with ratings just half a point lower than humans on a 0–10 scale. This suggests that AI has absorbed the same bias toward careful thinking from the vast texts it was trained on—books, articles, and other sources that praise deliberation.
What’s happening here? Intuition feels powerful, fast, confident—like a superhero swooping in with an answer. Think of stories celebrating quick decisions, like a pilot landing a plane on the Hudson River in a split second.
Yet this study shows people don’t trust it as much as expected. Instead, they value the process—someone who pauses, weighs options, and shows effort. That hesitation signals care, whether from a coworker or a chatbot.
In one test, 77% of participants chose to bet on a careful thinker rather than an intuitive one to solve a puzzle, even when both were equally accurate, suggesting that when stakes are involved, people trust deliberation over snap judgments.
This preference also has big implications for AI. If chatbots show step-by-step reasoning, people might trust them more for things like medical advice or financial tips.
But there’s a risk: what if someone—human or AI—fakes deliberation to seem trustworthy?
The study has limits. It focused on brainy tasks, not emotional choices like picking a date or a favorite song, where intuition might win. It used short stories, not real-life interactions, so trust might shift when meeting someone face-to-face.
Most participants were relatively highly educated and came from Western countries or India, so people from other cultures or with different educational backgrounds might view things differently. Even so, the findings suggest people are wired to admire careful thought, and AI picks up on it too.
That hesitation before you answer isn’t a flaw; it’s a powerful signal that tells everyone, human or AI, that you think before you speak, building instant trust and credibility.
Story Source: De Neys, W., & Raoelison, M. (2025). Published in Communications Psychology. Read the study here.