Though we all have access to a world of knowledge in the palms of our hands, people today are becoming increasingly unlikely to engage with ideas or opinions with which they do not agree. The present study investigates confirmation bias and motivated reasoning and how they may or may not contribute to creating a divide in opinions. Experiment 1 investigates how we update objective and subjective beliefs when given consensus or fact-based evidence. Results from Experiment 1 suggest that we update objective beliefs significantly more willingly than subjective beliefs. Experiment 2 examines motivated reasoning by assessing the credibility judgments of individuals affected and not affected by evidence related to neutral or charged topics. Experiment 2 produced mixed results, with one of the four prompts providing evidence for motivated reasoning in the manner in which we expected and another providing evidence for a community-based motivated reasoning pattern. Experiment 3 investigates how reflectiveness (as measured by the Cognitive Reflection Test) and the order in which topics are presented may affect belief updating patterns. Results from Experiment 3 suggest that high CRT individuals update their beliefs more than low CRT individuals, particularly on neutral topics. We also found evidence of an interaction between CRT scores and the order in which neutral and emotionally charged items are presented for evaluation. Overall, the present study investigated the conditions under which individuals are more or less willing to update their beliefs as well as the mechanisms that are employed to make these decisions.
Orringer, Matthew,
"Motivated Reasoning in a Community of Knowledge"
(2019).
Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/vdhf-ee38
