ABSTRACT

The influence of goals unrelated to accuracy – such as maintaining beliefs and attitudes consistent with one’s political identity – may undermine objective processing, enabling people to construct defenses for their own predispositions. A two-wave study is employed involving undergraduates who experienced gains in scientific reasoning ability to explore the influence of ability on reasoning about social scientific messages that reflects positively or negatively on affiliates of the two major U.S. political parties. Results suggest that although ability contributes to distinguishing strong from weak arguments, there is no evidence that ability either enhances or decreases partisan influences on research evaluation.

摘要

与准确性无关的目标的影响——例如保持与个人政治身份一致的信念和态度——可能会破坏客观处理，使人们能够为自己的倾向构建防御。一项两波研究涉及在科学推理能力方面有所提高的本科生，以探索能力对社会科学信息推理的影响，这些信息对美国两大政党的附属机构有积极或消极的影响。结果表明，尽管能力有助于区分强论点和弱论点，但没有证据表明能力会增强或减少党派对研究评估的影响。