Researchers at the University of California, Davis, recently looked at the way their users were searching for health care information. The researchers analysed the results using dual process theory. Susan Perez's paper, Characterizing the Processes for Navigating Internet Health Information Using Real-Time Observations: A Mixed-Methods Approachin the jMIR (Journal of Medical Internet Research) is freely available online, and I have the CILIP HLG current newsletter to thank for pointing this out.
I had not heard of Dual Process Theory so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, "In psychology, a dual process theory provides an account of how a phenomenon can occur in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of an implicit (automatic), unconscious process and an explicit (controlled), conscious process." It is a William James concept. You know, Psychologist William James, brother of Henry James, the brilliant brothers (also apparently they had a brilliant sister, Alice James, a diarist).
The researchers [and here I am using my own terminology] found that some people looked for information in a fast, intuitive way and others used a slow, methodical process. The older, better educated searchers were slow and methodical and the younger, less well educated ones were fast and, supposedly, intuitive. The researchers concluded that there was a need for some education to improve search skills. Presumably what they meant was that people needed to be told that using Google was not a very reliable method.
Intuition is less reliable than we think it is and it is difficult to persuade people that their thinking is irrational. See Stuart Sutherland's Irrationality.
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