In 2012, Stanovich received the E. L. Thorndike Career Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association (APA).

[5] His research on the cognitive basis of rationality has been featured in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[5] Stanovich has done extensive research on reading, language disabilities, and the psychology of rational thought.

[3] The Matthew Effect, with respect to education, refers to a research phenomenon regarding how new readers acquire the skills to read.

[8] In a 1993 article in the Journal of Learning Disabilities,[9] Stanovich coined the term dysrationalia[10] to refer to the tendency toward irrational thinking and action despite adequate intelligence.

Stanovich researched people's scores on rationality tests, comparing them with their scores on conventional intelligence tests, and revealed a low correlation between them; on some tasks, he found a near-complete dissociation between rational thinking and intelligence.

Stanovich has written nine books, six essays, and authored, or co-authored, over 200 research papers on reasoning and reading.