Examining the influence of anecdotal stories and the interplay of individual differences on reasoning

ABSTRACT

In two experiments, we explored whether anecdotal stories influenced how individuals reasoned when evaluating scientific news articles. We additionally considered the role of education level and thinking dispositions on reasoning. Participants evaluated eight scientific news articles that drew questionable interpretations from the evidence. Overall, anecdotal stories decreased the ability to reason scientifically even when controlling for education level and thinking dispositions. Additionally, we found that article length was related to participants' ratings of the news articles. Our study demonstrates that anecdotes can discourage scientific reasoning while also pointing to the potential influence of article length on judgements of quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Anecdotal stories
• thinking dispositions
• scientific communication
• evidence evaluation skills
• scientific reasoning

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Stuart Karabenick, Patricia King, and Annie Ro for their generous feedback throughout the development of this study. We would also like to thank Sam Gross and Diego Rizzo who collected the data for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.