Man?s deep-rooted tendency to maintain and reinforce a positive self-image
makes man inclined to uncritically accept desirable information (the
confirmation bias) as well as to criticize and reject undesirable information
(the disconfirmation bias). Since disconfirmation strategy leads to a
logically correct solution to the four-card Wason selection task, we
predicted that ego-involvement manipulation would have a significant effect
on the success rate of the task. Specifically, we hypothesized that subjects
who were exposed to personally threatening information would try to reject it
and thus be more successful on Wason task than those who were exposed to
non-threatening information, as established in previously published study by
Dawson et al. (2002a). Furthermore, we wanted to examine if manipulating
valence framing of the Wason task rule would result in a higher success rate
for the group exposed to the threatening and negatively framed rule (that
implied their own early death) than the group exposed to the threatening but
positively framed rule (that category of people other than the one they
belong to live longer). One hundred ninety five high school students from
Kragujevac, Serbia participated in the experiment. The results confirmed the
expected effect of involvement, while the main effect of framing did not
occur. However, there was a marginally significant involvement by framing
interaction: unexpectedly, non involved participants were more likely to
solve the task correctly when it was positively framed than when in was
negatively framed, whilst in the involved group there was no difference in
correct responding depending on framing. The findings suggest that the
success rate in Wason task can be sensitive to the valence framing of the
rule, but only when respondents are not highly personally threatened.
Potential methodological interventions in ego-involvement manipulation and
content of the rules are discussed.