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Showing posts with label Analytic Thinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Analytic Thinking. Show all posts

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Overconfidently conspiratorial: Conspiracy believers are dispositionally overconfident and massively overestimate how much others agree with them

Pennycook, G., Binnendyk, J., & Rand, D. G. 
(2022, December 5). PsyArXiv

Abstract

There is a pressing need to understand belief in false conspiracies. Past work has focused on the needs and motivations of conspiracy believers, as well as the role of overreliance on intuition. Here, we propose an alternative driver of belief in conspiracies: overconfidence. Across eight studies with 4,181 U.S. adults, conspiracy believers not only relied more intuition, but also overestimated their performance on numeracy and perception tests (i.e. were overconfident in their own abilities). This relationship with overconfidence was robust to controlling for analytic thinking, need for uniqueness, and narcissism, and was strongest for the most fringe conspiracies. We also found that conspiracy believers – particularly overconfident ones – massively overestimated (>4x) how much others agree with them: Although conspiracy beliefs were in the majority in only 12% of 150 conspiracies across three studies, conspiracy believers thought themselves to be in the majority 93% of the time.

Here is my summary:

The research found that people who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to be overconfident in their own abilities and to overestimate how much others agree with them. This was true even when controlling for other factors, such as analytic thinking, need for uniqueness, and narcissism.

The researchers conducted a series of studies to test their hypothesis. In one study, they found that people who believed in conspiracy theories were more likely to overestimate their performance on numeracy and perception tests. In another study, they found that people who believed in conspiracy theories were more likely to overestimate how much others agreed with them about a variety of topics, including climate change and the 2016 US presidential election.

The researchers suggest that overconfidence may play a role in the formation and maintenance of conspiracy beliefs. When people are overconfident, they are more likely to dismiss evidence that contradicts their beliefs and to seek out information that confirms their beliefs. This can lead to a "filter bubble" effect, where people are only exposed to information that reinforces their existing beliefs.

The researchers also suggest that overconfidence may lead people to overestimate how much others agree with them about their conspiracy beliefs. This can make them feel more confident in their beliefs and less likely to question them.

The findings of this research have implications for understanding and addressing the spread of conspiracy theories. It is important to be aware of the role that overconfidence may play in the formation and maintenance of conspiracy beliefs. This knowledge can be used to develop more effective interventions to prevent people from falling for conspiracy theories and to help people who already believe in conspiracy theories to critically evaluate their beliefs.

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Lazy, Not Biased: Susceptibility to Partisan Fake News Is Better Explained by Lack of Reasoning Than by Motivated Reasoning

Pennycook, G. & Rand, D. G.
Cognition. (2019)
Volume 188, July 2019, Pages 39-50

Abstract

Why do people believe blatantly inaccurate news headlines (“fake news”)? Do we use our reasoning abilities to convince ourselves that statements that align with our ideology are true, or does reasoning allow us to effectively differentiate fake from real regardless of political ideology? Here we test these competing accounts in two studies (total N = 3,446 Mechanical Turk workers) by using the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) as a measure of the propensity to engage in analytical reasoning. We find that CRT performance is negatively correlated with the perceived accuracy of fake news, and positively correlated with the ability to discern fake news from real news – even for headlines that align with individuals’ political ideology. Moreover, overall discernment was actually better for ideologically aligned headlines than for misaligned headlines. Finally, a headline-level analysis finds that CRT is negatively correlated with perceived accuracy of relatively implausible (primarily fake) headlines, and positively correlated with perceived accuracy of relatively plausible (primarily real) headlines. In contrast, the correlation between CRT and perceived accuracy is unrelated to how closely the headline aligns with the participant’s ideology. Thus, we conclude that analytic thinking is used to assess the plausibility of headlines, regardless of whether the stories are consistent or inconsistent with one’s political ideology. Our findings therefore suggest that susceptibility to fake news is driven more by lazy thinking than it is by partisan bias per se – a finding that opens potential avenues for fighting fake news.

Highlights

• Participants rated perceived accuracy of fake and real news headlines.

• Analytic thinking was associated with ability to discern between fake and real.

• We found no evidence that analytic thinking exacerbates motivated reasoning.

• Falling for fake news is more a result of a lack of thinking than partisanship.

Monday, December 11, 2017

Epistemic rationality: Skepticism toward unfounded beliefs requires sufficient cognitive ability and motivation to be rational

TomasStåhl and Jan-Willem van Prooijen
Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 122, 1 February 2018, Pages 155-163

Abstract

Why does belief in the paranormal, conspiracy theories, and various other phenomena that are not backed up by evidence remain widespread in modern society? In the present research we adopt an individual difference approach, as we seek to identify psychological precursors of skepticism toward unfounded beliefs. We propose that part of the reason why unfounded beliefs are so widespread is because skepticism requires both sufficient analytic skills, and the motivation to form beliefs on rational grounds. In Study 1 we show that analytic thinking is associated with a lower inclination to believe various conspiracy theories, and paranormal phenomena, but only among individuals who strongly value epistemic rationality. We replicate this effect on paranormal belief, but not conspiracy beliefs, in Study 2. We also provide evidence suggesting that general cognitive ability, rather than analytic cognitive style, is the underlying facet of analytic thinking that is responsible for these effects.

The article is here.