Does “putting on your thinking cap” reduce myside bias in evaluation of scientific evidence?

Abstract

The desire to maintain current beliefs can lead individuals to evaluate contrary evidence more critically than consistent evidence. We test whether priming individuals’ scientific reasoning skills reduces this often-observed myside bias, when people evaluate scientific evidence about which they have prior positions. We conducted three experiments in which participants read a news-style article about a study that either supported or opposed their attitudes regarding the Affordable Care Act. We manipulated whether participants completed a test posing scientific reasoning problems before or after reading the article and evaluating the evidence that it reported. Consistent with previous research, we found that participants were biased in favor of evidence consistent with their prior attitudes regarding the Affordable Care Act. Priming individuals’ scientific reasoning skills reduced myside bias only when accompanied by direct instructions to apply those skills to the task at hand. We discuss the processes contributing to biased evaluation of scientific evidence.     

These pretzels are going to make me thirsty tomorrow: Differential development of hot and cool episodic foresight in early childhood?

The current study examined 3‐ and 7‐year‐olds' performance on two types of episodic foresight tasks: A task that required ‘cool’ reasoning processes about the use of objects in future situations and a task that required ‘hot’ processes to inhibit a salient current physiological state in order to reason accurately about a future state. Results revealed that 7‐year‐olds outperformed 3‐year‐olds on the episodic foresight task that involved cool processes, but did not show age differences in performance on the task that involved hot processes. In fact, both 3‐ and 7‐year‐olds performed equally poorly on the task that required predicting a future physiological state that was in conflict with their current state. Further, performance on the two tasks was unrelated. We discuss the results in terms of differing developmental trajectories for episodic foresight tasks that differentially rely on hot and cool processes and the universal difficulties humans have with predicting later outcomes that conflict with current motivational states.     

The Treatment of Histrionic and Narcissistic Personality Disorder Behaviors: A Single-Subject Demonstration of Clinical Improvement Using Functional Analytic Psychotherapy

This article presents single-subject data for the treatment of histrionic and narcissistic personality disorder behaviors using a relatively brief course of an interpersonal therapy, Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (Kohlenberg & Tsai, 1991). The treatment produced significant changes in these behaviors both statistically and qualitatively. Empirical methods for analyzing the changes across sessions and for determining that the therapist engaged in the proposed mechanism of clinical change are discussed. While these data are for one subject, the results of treatment provide both a method of treating difficult and long-standing client behaviors such as these, and for assessing the progress of therapy.     

Mechanisms of eyewitness suggestibility: tests of the explanatory role hypothesis

In a recent paper, Chrobak and Zaragoza (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(3), 827–844, 2013) proposed the explanatory role hypothesis, which posits that the likelihood of developing false memories for post-event suggestions is a function of the explanatory function the suggestion serves. In support of this hypothesis, they provided evidence that participant-witnesses were especially likely to develop false memories for their forced fabrications when their fabrications helped to explain outcomes they had witnessed. In three experiments, we test the generality of the explanatory role hypothesis as a mechanism of eyewitness suggestibility by assessing whether this hypothesis can predict suggestibility errors in (a) situations where the post-event suggestions are provided by the experimenter (as opposed to fabricated by the participant), and (b) across a variety of memory measures and measures of recollective experience. In support of the explanatory role hypothesis, participants were more likely to subsequently freely report (E1) and recollect the suggestions as part of the witnessed event (E2, source test) when the post-event suggestion helped to provide a causal explanation for a witnessed outcome than when it did not serve this explanatory role. Participants were also less likely to recollect the suggestions as part of the witnessed event (on measures of subjective experience) when their explanatory strength had been reduced by the presence of an alternative explanation that could explain the same outcome (E3, source test + warning). Collectively, the results provide strong evidence that the search for explanatory coherence influences people’s tendency to misremember witnessing events that were only suggested to them.     

Tampering with Tradition: Rationales Concerning Women��s Married Names and Children��s Surnames

Despite advances in gender equality in recent decades, the majority of women continue to change their names upon marriage and parents overwhelmingly opt to give children the father??s surname. In two correlational studies, both involving undergraduate samples from Toronto, Canada, we examined gender differences in naming preferences and in justifications underlying a traditional name choice. Men were more likely to prefer traditional choices in both women??s married names (Study 1; N?=?68) and children??s surnames (Study 2; N?=?63), and were also more likely to endorse most potential rationales for these choices. Traditional choices were associated with such factors as concern regarding family dynamics, whereas nontraditional choices were associated with such factors as a desire to increase gender equality.     

Language‐dependent memory in bilingual learning

Spanish‐English bilinguals were taught academic‐type information about History, Biology, Chemistry and Mythology in their two languages. Upon testing, it was found that memory was more accurate and retrieval was faster when the language of retrieval and the language of encoding matched than when they did not match. For accuracy, the pattern of results was influenced by bilinguals' language proficiency, so that only balanced bilinguals whose high proficiency levels were similar in both languages showed language‐dependent recall. For reaction time, bilinguals were faster to retrieve information when the languages of retrieval and encoding matched than when they mismatched, but only for material encoded in Spanish. The influence of encoding and retrieval languages on error patterns was also examined. Together, the study's findings suggest that bilingual learning may be subject to language dependency and that experience with a language may increase the strength of linguistic cues in producing language‐dependent memory. The results are consistent with previous findings of language‐dependent memory in autobiographical narratives, carry applied implications for bilingual education, and are discussed within the theoretical framework of the relationship between language and memory. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Further examination of the treatment of multiply controlled inappropriate mealtime behavior

We systematically replicated Bachmeyer et al. (2009) by examining extinction procedures matched to each function, individually and in combination, to treat the food or liquid refusal of 4 children diagnosed with a feeding disorder whose inappropriate mealtime behavior was maintained by multiple functions (i.e., escape and attention). Previous research suggests that adding differential reinforcement to extinction procedures may result in better treatment outcomes. Therefore, we added differential reinforcement to extinction procedures matched to each function. Differential reinforcement and extinction matched only to escape or attention resulted in low rates of inappropriate mealtime behavior and high, stable levels of acceptance for only 1 child. Consistent with Bachmeyer et al., inappropriate mealtime behavior decreased, and acceptance increased for the remaining 3 children only after we matched differential reinforcement and extinction procedures to both escape and attention.     

Nationalism,Patriotism, and Support for the European Union

Does attachment to a nation enhance or dampen support for the European Union (EU)? Using the 2003 and 2013 ISSP national-identity modules, we isolate and provide multi-item measures of two distinct types of national attachment—nationalism and patriotism. We find that they are positively related yet have divergent effects. We validate the measures showing that nationalism increases, and patriotism decreases, support for nationalistic policies (anti-immigration and protectionism) as expected. We then test the effects of nationalism and patriotism on EU attitudes and find that nationalism increases, and patriotism decreases, opposition to the EU. The presence of a neo-nationalist political party enhanced the effects of nationalism on opposition to the EU, underscoring the importance of political rhetoric in shaping nationalistic EU opposition. In further support of the rhetoric hypothesis, the most-educated nationalists are most likely to oppose the EU in countries with a neo-nationalist political party and vote for such parties when present.