When fast logic meets slow belief: Evidence for a parallel-processing model of belief bias.

Two experiments pitted the default-interventionist account of belief bias against a parallel-processing model. According to the former, belief bias occurs because a fast, belief-based evaluation of the conclusion pre-empts a working-memory demanding logical analysis. In contrast, according to the la...

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Published in:Memory & Cognition Vol. 45; no. 4; pp. 539 - 553
Main Authors: Trippas, Dries, Thompson, Valerie, Handley, Simon
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature May2017
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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          Trippas, Dries
          Thompson, Valerie
          Handley, Simon
        affil:
          Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development , Berlin Germany
          Department of Psychology , University of Saskatchewan , Saskatoon Canada
          Faculty of Human Sciences , Macquarie University , Sydney Australia
      su:
        Problem solving
        Logic
        Reaction time
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          Problem solving
          Logic
          Reaction time
      keyword:
        Belief
        Conflict detection
        Deductive reasoning
        Dual process theory
        Belief
        Conflict detection
        Deductive reasoning
        Dual process theory
      ab: Two experiments pitted the default-interventionist account of belief bias against a parallel-processing model. According to the former, belief bias occurs because a fast, belief-based evaluation of the conclusion pre-empts a working-memory demanding logical analysis. In contrast, according to the latter both belief-based and logic-based responding occur in parallel. Participants were given deductive reasoning problems of variable complexity and instructed to decide whether the conclusion was valid on half the trials or to decide whether the conclusion was believable on the other half. When belief and logic conflict, the default-interventionist view predicts that it should take less time to respond on the basis of belief than logic, and that the believability of a conclusion should interfere with judgments of validity, but not the reverse. The parallel-processing view predicts that beliefs should interfere with logic judgments only if the processing required to evaluate the logical structure exceeds that required to evaluate the knowledge necessary to make a belief-based judgment, and vice versa otherwise. Consistent with this latter view, for the simplest reasoning problems (modus ponens), judgments of belief resulted in lower accuracy than judgments of validity, and believability interfered more with judgments of validity than the converse. For problems of moderate complexity (modus tollens and single-model syllogisms), the interference was symmetrical, in that validity interfered with belief judgments to the same degree that believability interfered with validity judgments. For the most complex (three-term multiple-model syllogisms), conclusion believability interfered more with judgments of validity than vice versa, in spite of the significant interference from conclusion validity on judgments of belief.
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    language: English
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