Three decades of lay epistemics: The why, how, and who of knowledge formation

Abstract

A conceptual integration and review are presented of three separate research programmes informed by the theory of lay epistemics (Kruglanski, 1989). They respectively address the “why”, “how”, and “who” questions about human knowledge formation. The “why” question is treated in work on the need for cognitive closure that propels epistemic behaviour and affects individual, interpersonal, and group phenomena. The “how” question is addressed in work on the unimodel (Kruglanski, Pierro, Mannetti, Erb, & Chun, 2007) depicting the process of drawing conclusions from the “information given”. The “who” question is addressed in work on “epistemic authority” highlighting the centrality of source effects (including oneself as a source) in human epistemic behaviour. These separate research paradigms explore facets of epistemic behaviour that jointly produce human knowledge, of essential significance to people's’ individual and social functioning.

Keywords:

• Need for closure
• Unimodel
• Epistemic authority
• Rule following
• Seizing

Notes

¹For Popper (1959) the process of hypothesis testing is represented by the premise If H then E, which implies that one can only falsify a hypothesis via a logical modus tollens (if E is false then we can conclude that H must be false), but not verify it as we are suggesting. According to our analysis, however, the knower may depart from the assumption that if and only if hypothesis H were true evidence E would be observed. The if and only if framing implies that not only if H then E is true, but also if E then H is true. This way one could logically derive the hypothesis from the evidence in a modus ponens fashion, whereby E (the evidence is observed) therefore H (the hypothesis is supported). Of course, the if and only if assumption may need to be modified on the basis of subsequent information which would cast doubt on the originally derived conclusion that H was proven or supported. For instance, if an alternative hypothesis H₁ were posed and the need to distinguish it from the original H arose, one would formulate an inference rule whereby if and only if H but not H₁ were true then E₁would obtain, etc.

²In a recent paper, Roets, van Hiel, Cornelis, and Soetens (2008) argued that in addition to exerting a direct motivational effect similar to that of dispositional NFCC, situational manipulations of need for closure (via time pressure or noise) exert an effect on cognitive capacity as well manifesting in deteriorated task performance.

³That the general implicational IF-THEN structure represents the gist of inference is a mainstay of most major depictions of this process in the philosophy of science and of knowledge literatures. Consider the venerated Hempel–Openheim (1948) scheme of scientific explanation, known as the deductive nomological (D-N) framework. According to this model, a scientific explanation contains two major elements: an explanandum, a sentence “describing the phenomenon to be explained” and an explanans, “the class of sentences that account for the phenomenon” (Hempel & Oppenheim, 1948, reprinted in Hempel, 1965, p. 247). For the explanans to successfully explain the explanandum, “the explanandum must be a logical consequence of the explanans” and “the sentences constituting the explanans must be true”. (Hempel, 1965, p. 248). That is, any proper explanation takes the form of a sound deductive argument in which the explanandum follows as a conclusion from the premises in the explanans. For instance, the sentence “All gases expand when heated under constant pressure”, or “If something is a gas, then it expands when heated under constant pressure”, constitutes a major premise that in conjunction with the appropriate minor premise—that is, information that “some particular substance is a gas that has been heated under constant pressure”—affords the inference that this substance will expand, or an explanation of why it did expand.