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Humans are very diverse and although we share many similarities, we also have many differences. The social groups we belong to help form our identities (Tajfel, 1974). These differences may be difficult for some people to reconcile, which may lead to prejudice toward people who are different. Prejudice is a negative attitude and feeling toward an individual based solely on one’s membership in a particular social group (Allport, 1954; Brown, 2010). Prejudice is common against people who are...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 25, 2026

Online Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of Dorsomedial and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Cognition Decision Making, and Cognitive Dissonance
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Subtract to solve: a pilot study testing implicit and experiential interventions against additive bias.

Maria Adriana Neroni1

  • 1Department of Education, Psychology and Communication Sciences, Suor Orsola Benincasa University, Naples, Italy.

Frontiers in Cognition
|June 24, 2026
PubMed
Summary

Additive bias, the tendency to add rather than remove, can be mitigated. This study found that both the additive bias Implicit Association Test (ad-IAT) and experiential learning improved problem-solving accuracy by promoting subtractive thinking.

Keywords:
additive biascreative problem solvingexperiential learningimplicit association test (IAT)reasoning

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Published on: September 11, 2021

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Psychology
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Individuals often exhibit additive bias, preferring to add elements rather than remove them when transforming situations.
  • Strategies to counteract additive bias are underdeveloped, despite its prevalence in decision-making and problem-solving.
  • Additive bias impacts various domains, including creativity, education, and cognitive training.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the efficacy of the additive bias Implicit Association Test (ad-IAT) as an educational tool for mitigating additive bias.
  • To compare the effectiveness of the ad-IAT with an experiential learning approach and a control group in promoting subtractive thinking.
  • To assess the potential of scalable interventions for fostering metacognitive awareness and behavioral change related to additive bias.

Main Methods:

  • A pilot study involving 60 participants randomly assigned to ad-IAT, experiential learning, or control conditions.
  • Participants engaged in grid-based tasks designed to highlight the efficiency of subtractive strategies over additive ones.
  • The ad-IAT condition provided personalized feedback on implicit preferences for additive concepts.

Main Results:

  • Participants in the ad-IAT condition demonstrated a significant implicit preference for additive concepts.
  • Both ad-IAT and experiential learning groups showed improved accuracy in the subtractive task compared to the control group.
  • The experiential learning group completed the task significantly faster than the other groups, suggesting enhanced efficiency.

Conclusions:

  • Implicit and experiential interventions can effectively reduce reliance on additive strategies and promote subtractive thinking.
  • The ad-IAT presents a time-efficient and scalable method for increasing awareness of additive bias and encouraging behavioral shifts.
  • Findings have implications for enhancing creativity, educational strategies, and cognitive training programs by addressing cognitive biases.