Myside bias, school performance, and the polarity of music preferences

ABSTRACT

The study examined myside bias among Bulgarian students using a research paradigm devised by Stanovich and West (2007. Natural myside bias is independent of cognitive ability. Thinking & Reasoning, 13(3), 225–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546780600780796; Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. [2008]. On the failure of cognitive ability to predict myside and one-sided thinking biases. Thinking & Reasoning, 14(2), 129–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546780701679764). Ten domains of personally relevant everyday experience were selected, including previously unexplored domains such as preferences for popular music styles. Replicating previous findings, the study found myside bias in all domains but one but failed to find an association between the magnitude of myside bias and school performance. Importantly, music styles that received more extreme liking ratings, regardless of direction, generated a larger myside bias. The study thus presents first exploratory evidence that the strength of prior opinion predicts the magnitude of myside bias not only within a particular topic but also across a set of related topics. This finding is in line with the dual-process account of myside bias as the result of Type 1 processing, further suggesting a potential mechanism in terms of the affect heuristic.

KEYWORDS:

• myside bias
• school performance
• music preferences
• ‌dual-process theory

Acknowledgments

I thank Camellia Hancheva, Svetlina Koleva, and Eliza Ivanova for their assistance in the data collection, and Ekaterina Peycheva and Evelina Marinova for translating the myside bias statements into English and providing feedback to the manuscript. I also thank the participants for their voluntary participation in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The dataset that supports the findings of this study is openly available at the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GBN4F.

Notes

1 Stanovich and West dichotomized responses to “certain” that God exists (7) versus “uncertain” (1–6). However, in the present sample, only 27 participants indicated “certain”. Consequently, the “almost certain” group (n = 21) was added to the believers group. Repeating the analysis with the original dichotomization yields practically identical results.