How serious a fallacy is inconsistency?

Consistency is often pictured as an indispensable requisite for rationality. The paper argues that this is overly rigoristic. Inconsistency can be treated as a matter of isolable singularities rather than an all-destructive disaster. The paper, supports and illustrates a perspective on which consistency can be seen as a desideratum rather than a totaly non-negotiable demand. The argumentation of the paper casts consistency in the role of a cognitive ideal rather than a sine qua non condition of rational process.     

How can a stereotype inconsistency bias be encouraged in communication?

This study aimed to investigate what conditions can lead to a bias for communicating stereotype inconsistent (SI) information, relative to stereotype consistent (SC) information. Sixty‐three undergraduate university students (22 males, 41 females; M_age = 21.25) read a story about an Arab man who exhibited characteristics consistent and inconsistent with the stereotype of Arab men. The story was transmitted through 21 three‐person communication chains; each participant rewrote the story from memory for the next person in the chain to read, with only the first participant in each chain reading the original story. As hypothesized, when a surprising category conjunction was formed by pairing the primary stereotype (Arab men) with a secondary stereotype of a contradictory nature (kindergarten teachers), SC information was circulated less than SI information. This was also the case when a causal explanation was provided that accounted for the unexpected SI information. Findings indicate the potential of techniques that elicit cognitive elaboration of SI information to encourage an SI bias in communication, and show promise for exploring ways to reduce the impact of negative stereotypical information in the long term.     

Models and scientific representations or: who is afraid of inconsistency?

I argue that if we make explicit the role of the user of scientific representations not only in the application but also in the construction of a model or representation, then inconsistent modeling assumptions do not pose an insurmountable obstacle to our representational practices.     

The inconsistency of Physics (with a capital “P”)

This paper discusses a conception of physics as a collection of theories that, from a logical point of view, is inconsistent. It is argued that this logical conception of the relations between physical theories is too crude. Mathematical subtleties allow for a much more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the relations between different physical theories.     

Evaluative expectations and the gender schema: Is failed inconsistency better?

Are evaluative assessments a part of the information that constitutes the gender stereotype? Two studies tested this question by presenting participants (50 female and 43 male college students, for whom English was their native language) with information that manipulated both the knowledge of gender roles and the evaluative assessments of performance in those roles. Participants tried to learn statements like “Jane is a good nurse” or “John is a bad nurse.” Memory for these relationships was then tested. Results indicated that when the person's name and the role were consistent with the gender stereotype, a positive evaluative connection made the statement easier to recall than a negative evaluative connection. However, an inconsistent name—role pairing was easier to recall when the evaluative connection was negative rather than positive. The results are interpreted as support for an evaluative bias that is part of the knowledge associated with gender differences.     

The inconsistency of higher order extensions of Martin-Löf's type theory

Martin-Löf's constructive type theory forms the basis of this paper. His central notions of category and set, and their relations with Russell's type theories, are discussed. It is shown that addition of an axiom — treating the category of propositions as a set and thereby enabling higher order quantification — leads to inconsistency. This theorem is a variant of Girard's paradox, which is a translation into type theory of Mirimanoff's paradox (concerning the set of all well-founded sets). The occurrence of the contradiction is explained in set theoretical terms. Crucial here is the way a proof-object of an existential proposition is understood. It is shown that also Russell's paradox can be translated into type theory. The type theory extended with the axiom mentioned above contains constructive higher order logic, but even if one only adds constructive second order logic to type theory the contradictions arise.     

On bad decisions and deciding badly: When intention–behavior inconsistency is regrettable

Independent of the valence of the decision outcomes, the quality of the decision process influences the experience of regret, a longitudinal study and two experiments, involving a total of close to 2000 participants, provide systematic evidence that intention–behavior inconsistency, as a prime indicator of a failed decision process, is regret inducing. Moreover, this inconsistency effect is specific to the emotion of regret, mediated by the judged quality of the decision process, independent of the valence of the decision outcomes, and, importantly, disappears when the quality of the decision process is high because inconsistency is justified. This provides new insights into regret’s role in the action sequence, and has implications for decision justification theory, and action/inaction research.     

Thinking and caring about cognitive inconsistency: when and for whom does attitudinal ambivalence feel uncomfortable?

The relation between conflicting evaluations of attitude objects (potential ambivalence) and associated unpleasant feelings (felt ambivalence) was investigated. Participants indicated their potential and felt ambivalence about capital punishment (Studies 1 and 2) and abortion (Studies 1-3). The simultaneous accessibility (J. N. Bassili, 1996) of participants' potential ambivalence (i.e., how quickly and equally quickly conflicting evaluations came to mind) was measured using response latency (Studies 1-3) and manipulated by repeated expression (Study 3). The relation between potential ambivalence and felt ambivalence was strongest when potential ambivalence was high in simultaneous accessibility (Studies 1-3). This pattern was most pronounced for participants who were high in preference for consistency (Study 3; R. B. Cialdini, M. R. Trost, & T. J. Newsom, 1995). Similarities of ambivalence and cognitive dissonance constructs are discussed.     

When does inconsistency hurt? On the relation between phonological consistency effects and the reliability of sublexical units

Phonological consistency describes to what extent a letter string in one word is pronounced equally in other words. Phonological reliability describes to what extent a sublexical unit is usually consistent throughout a language. The relationship between the two concepts was investigated by comparing five sublexical units (onset-consonants, vowel, end-consonants, and the concatenation of the vowel with begin- or end-consonants) in Dutch and English with respect to their reliability and to how their consistency was related to naming errors and latencies. In a regression analysis, naming latencies and errors on genuine Dutch words (consistent) and imported words (inconsistent) were predicted by the phonological consistency of the five units. The same was done for two sets of English naming data. Consistency had a much stronger effect in Dutch than in English naming studies when all five units were considered. The special role of the vowel plus end-consonants, which has been found in English naming data, could not be demonstrated in Dutch. In both languages, the size of consistency effects mirrors the reliability of the five units.     

Value seeking and prediction-decision inconsistency: Why don’t people take what they predict they’ll like the most?

In this research, it is proposed that, when making a choice between consumption goods, people do not just think about which option will deliver the highest consumption utility but also think about which choice is most consistent with rationales—beliefs about how they should make decisions. The present article examines a specific rationale, value seeking. The value-seeking rationale refers to the belief that one should choose the option in a choice set that has the highest monetary value. Studies 1 and 2 show that value seeking could lead to a prediction-decision inconsistency, predicting a high consumption utility from one option but choosing another option. Study 3 shows that the prediction-decision inconsistency could be created even by “illusory” (as opposed to truly monetary) values and that the inconsistency could be turned on or off through empirical manipulation.     

Is age kinder to females than to males?

To investigate possible gender differences in the patterns of age-cognition relations, a meta-analysis was conducted on the data from 25 studies (5,201 participants) by the second author and his collaborators. Gender and age differences consistent with prior reports were found, but there were few measures on which the age × gender interactions were significant. Although the majority of neuroimaging studies investigating gender differences in age-related atrophy and functional decline report greater age-related differences in males, the only significant interactions on the cognitive measures in this study (on measures of speed and reasoning) were in the direction of lesser age-related declines for males than for females.     

Do we have to be Realists about Colour in order to be able to attribute Colour Perceptions to Other Persons?

One of the main targets of Barry Stroud’s criticism in his recent book ‚The Quest for Reality. Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour’ are eliminativist theories of colour which he regards as a version of the metaphysical project of the unmasking of colours (Stroud, 2000). According to this view, no physical objects have any of the colours we see them or believe them to have. However, although this error theory describes all our colour perceptions as illusory, and all our colour beliefs as false, it cannot deny that we actually perceive colours and that we do believe that physical objects are coloured. Therefore, it has to account for these psychological facts without relying on any assumptions about the colours of things. Thus, the central question for the unmasking project is whether it is possible to acknowledge someone’s perceiving a certain colour or having beliefs about the colours of things without holding that anything anywhere has any colour at all. Contrary to Stroud, this paper defends the view that we can acknowledge that people believe in colours without having ourselves to accept their existence.