Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory

What it is

CEST has roots in a 1973 paper by Epstein, "The self concept revisited or a theory of a theory". His 1994 paper in American Psychologist, "Integration of the Cognitive and the Psychodynamic Unconscious", is described by commentators as the seminal statement. Scott Barry Kaufman, who wrote a foreword for Epstein's later work, calls him the originator of modern dual-process theory. These descriptions are secondary and personal, and they should be read that way.

On Kaufman's account the experiential system is often compared to Kahneman's System 1. It is an automatic, associative learning system that learns from direct experience, is shared with other higher animals, and picks up implicit beliefs and needs, often outside awareness. The rational system is often compared to System 2 and operates through deliberate, logical analysis that is primarily verbal. The two run in parallel, each has strengths and weaknesses depending on the person and the situation, and behaviour reflects both in varying proportions.

One inconsistency in that secondary source is worth recording: it cites the 1994 paper once with the year 2004. The 1994 date is used here.

In effect

The theory earned its place in the denominator-neglect literature through the ratio-bias bowls. Kirkpatrick and Epstein published "Cognitive-experiential self-theory and subjective probability" in 1992, and Denes-Raj and Epstein followed in 1994 with a paper whose title states the finding: conflict between intuitive and rational processing, in which people behave against their better judgment. As later researchers report the 1994 study, 61 per cent of participants chose nine red beans in a hundred over one in ten, and 40 per cent still chose seven in a hundred.

Dale and colleagues tested the bowls again in 2007 over 300 rounds of choices, some of them paid. They confirmed the bias and separated it from general random error. Payment improved accuracy in the within-subject comparison, the between-subject tests were not significant, and the bias declined over the rounds.

What it does not say

CEST does not say the experiential system is the villain. Kaufman's account of Epstein's view is that emotional experience is part of becoming an integrated person and not something to repress.

It is not the only explanation of the bowl results. Price and Matthews proposed in 2009 that the ratio bias and the group-diffusion effect are one process in which the more salient term of the ratio wins. That account predicts when the pull weakens or flips, which a description of two systems in conflict does not. This publication treats CEST as a good description of what the conflict feels like and prefers the salience account as an explanation.

And it does not rest on primary reading here. The theory is described from secondary summaries and from the titles and reported figures of the bowl papers, so its evidence status is mixed.

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