Evidence of Belief Bias: Belief Vs Logic
In a series of experiments by Evans, Barston and Pollard (1983) participants were presented with evaluation task paradigms, containing two premises and a conclusion . In other words, the participants were asked to make an evaluation of logical validity. The subjects, however, a exhibited belief bias, evidenced by the tendency to rejected valid arguments with unbelievable conclusions, and endorsed invalid arguments with believable conclusions. It seems that instead of following directions and assessing logical validity, the subjects based their assessments on personal beliefs.
Consequently, these results demonstrated a greater acceptance of more believable (80%), than unbelievable (33%) conclusions. Participants also illustrated evidence of logical competences and the results determined an increase in acceptance of n valid (73%) than invalid (41%). Additionally, there’s a small difference between believable and valid (89%) in comparison to unbelievable and invalid (56%) (Evans, Barston & Pollard, 1983; Morley, Evans & Handley, 2004).
It has been argued that using more realistic content in syllogisms can facilitate more normative performance from participants. It has been suggested that the use of more abstract, artificial content will also have a biasing effect on performance.Therefore, more research is required to understand fully how and why belief bias occurs and if there are certain mechanisms that are responsible for such things.. There is also evidence of clear individual differences in normative responding that are predicted by the response times of participants
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