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Telling Just What We Know: Revisiting Nisbett and Wilson’s Stocking Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2025

Adriana Renero
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Abstract

Nisbett and Wilson’s (1977) classic study in social cognition, the so-called ‘stocking case’, is a long-lasting authority that has often been interpreted as providing empirical support for the claim that introspection regarding mental processes such as the decision-making process is untrustworthy. In this article, I argue that such interpretations fail to identify the appropriate targets of introspection or appropriate object of criticism, thus leading to the emergence of several sceptical views. I show that researchers erroneously view the psychological causes of mental processes, rather than the processes themselves, as the targets of introspection and erroneously equate introspection about the decision-making process with mechanisms such as reasoning and retrospection. Therefore, sceptical views concerning the trustworthiness of introspection about the decision-making process ultimately commit two fallacies pertaining to – what I call – equivocal targets and equivocal mechanisms.

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Research Article
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Philosophy , First View , pp. 1 - 27
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of Philosophy.

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