Better but still biased: Analytic cognitive style and belief bias

Abstract

Belief bias is the tendency for prior beliefs to influence people's deductive reasoning in two ways: through the application of a simple belief-heuristic (response bias) and through the application of more effortful reasoning for unbelievable conclusions (accuracy effect or motivated reasoning). Previous research indicates that cognitive ability is the primary determinant of the effect of beliefs on accuracy. In the current study, we show that the mere tendency to engage analytic reasoning (analytic cognitive style) is responsible for the effect of cognitive ability on motivated reasoning. The implications of this finding for our understanding of the impact of individual differences on belief bias are discussed.

Keywords:

• Belief bias
• Motivated reasoning
• Response bias
• Analytic cognitive style
• Cognitive ability
• Individual differences
• Signal detection theory

Notes

¹ In the remainder of this paper, we use the term “motivated reasoning” strictly to refer to the tendency for logical reasoning accuracy to be higher for unbelievable than for believable syllogisms. This should not be confused with other interpretations of motivated reasoning such as rationalising statements which have actual utility to the reasoner.

² By response bias, we refer to the tendency for participants to accept believable problems more than unbelievable ones. Note that from a formal modelling perspective, this can be characterised equally well in terms of a criterion shift or a symmetrical shift in the underlying distributions of argument strength.

³ A correlation matrix of all the measures is available in the supplementary materials (see Table S3).