Educational researcher Hana Vrba reviewed a decade of evidence on whether teaching students about cognitive biases — confirmation bias, anchoring, framing effects — actually reduces those biases in their reasoning. The picture is mixed. Knowing about biases in the abstract reliably improved performance on tests that asked about them; transfer to real-world reasoning was much weaker. Awareness, Vrba concludes, is a starting point, but counts as inoculation only when paired with structured practice.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
- A
Education has no effect on reasoning.
- B
Cognitive biases are unimportant.
- C
Teaching cognitive biases eliminates them.
- Dcheck_circle
Vrba's review concludes that teaching about biases helps in test contexts but does not, on its own, robustly improve real-world reasoning.
Explanation
The passage carefully separates abstract knowledge gains from real-world transfer — B. A, C, and D oversimplify.