Effects of perspective and belief on analytic reasoning in a scientific reasoning task

Abstract

The purpose of these studies was to test the hypothesis that changing perspectives from one's own to another's promotes the engagement of analytic processing and, in turn, reduces the impact of beliefs. In two experiments participants evaluated research vignettes containing belief-consistent and belief-inconsistent conclusions, and indicated whether the data supported a correlation between two variables. Consistent with our hypothesis, the tendency to endorse correlations consistent with prior belief was reduced when participants evaluated the data from the researcher's perspective relative to their own. We also administered the Actively Open Minded Thinking (AOT) scale (Stanovich & West, 2007, 2008), which did not predict belief effects on our task. We did however observe that the AOT was reliably associated with different response strategies: high AOT scorers were more inclined to choose ambiguous response options, such as “no conclusion is warranted”, whereas low scorers evinced a preference for more determinate options (e.g., there is no relationship between the two variables). We interpret our findings in the context of dual process theories of reasoning and from a Bayesian perspective.

Keywords:

• Analytic thinking
• Dual process theory
• Individual differences
• Prior beliefs and reasoning
• Perspective
• Scientific reasoning

Notes

¹Readers may be concerned about the fact that we have labelled the evidence to be “weak”. Arguably, the small sample evidence could be regarded as strong, given that one could compute a significant chi-square from the numbers provided. However, similar arguments could not be advanced regarding the other types of evidence. Moreover, it seems unlikely that our sample had sufficient statistical sophistication to do so; indeed, our data suggest that our participants viewed the evidence as weak. The overall endorsement rates in the two experiments we report averaged around 50%, consistent with the assumption that the evidence was not perceived to be compelling. Even when conclusions were belief-consistent, they were endorsed only about two-thirds of the time. There was some variability in endorsement rates across the evidence types; varying from about 60% for the small sample evidence to about 30% for the irrelevant evidence, with the restricted sample (49%) and one-sided evidence (42%) in between.

²A second measure of thinking dispositions was piloted at this time, but will not be reported in this paper.

³We replicated this pattern using the same materials with perspective as a between-participants factor. For the 43 participants in the “own” perspective condition, believable conclusions were endorsed more often than unbelievable conclusions (64.5% vs 47.3%, t(42) = 2.11, p = .041). The 45 participants in the “researchers” perspective condition did not produce a difference (64.4% vs 55.6%, t(44) = 1.18, p = .24).

⁴We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

⁵Thanks to David Over for suggesting this alternative.