Abstract

The belief bias in reasoning occurs when individuals are more willing to accept conclusions that are consistent with their beliefs than conclusions that are inconsistent. The present study examined a belief bias in syllogisms containing political content. In two experiments, participants judged whether conclusions were valid, completed political ideology measures, and completed a cognitive reflection test. The conclusions varied in validity and in their political ideology (conservative or liberal). Participants were sensitive to syllogisms’ validity and conservatism. Overall, they showed a liberal bias, accepting more liberal than conservative conclusions. Furthermore, conservative participants accepted more conservative conclusions than liberal conclusions, whereas liberal participants showed the opposite pattern. Cognitive reflection did not magnify this effect as predicted by a motivated system 2 reasoning account of motivated ideological reasoning. These results suggest that people with different ideologies may accept different conclusions from the same evidence.

摘要

当个人比不一致的结论更愿意接受与他们的信念一致的结论时，就会发生推理中的信念偏见。本研究考察了包含政治内容的三段论的信念偏见。在两个实验中，参与者判断结论是否有效，完成了政治意识形态措施，并完成了认知反思测试。结论的有效性和政治意识形态（保守或自由主义）各不相同。与会者对三段论的有效性和保守性很敏感。总体而言，他们表现出自由主义的偏见，接受的观点比保守的结论更为自由。此外，保守派参与者接受的结论比自由派结论更为保守，而自由派参与者表现出相反的模式。认知反射并没有像动机思想推理的动机系统2推理帐户所预测的那样放大这种影响。这些结果表明，具有不同意识形态的人可能会从同一证据中接受不同的结论。