Stepping Outside the Echo Chamber: Is Intellectual Humility Associated With Less Political Myside Bias?

In recent years, an upsurge of polarization has been a salient feature of political discourse in America. A small but growing body of research has examined the potential relevance of intellectual humility (IH) to political polarization. In the present investigation, we extend this work to political myside bias, testing the hypothesis that IH is associated with less bias in two community samples ( N1 = 498; N2 = 477). In line with our expectations, measures of IH were negatively correlated with political myside bias across paradigms, political topics, and samples. These relations were robust to controlling for humility. We also examined ideological asymmetries in the relations between IH and political myside bias, finding that IH–bias relations were statistically equivalent in members of the political left and right. Notwithstanding important limitations and caveats, these data establish IH as one of a small handful psychological features known to predict less political myside bias.

Stepping Outside the Echo Chamber: Is Intellectual Humility Associated with Less Political Myside Bias?

In recent years, an upsurge of polarization has been a salient feature of political discourse in America. A small but growing body of research has examined the potential relevance of intellectual humility (IH) to political polarization. In the present investigation, we extend this work to political myside bias, testing the hypothesis that IH is associated with less bias in two community samples (N1 = 498; N2 = 477). In line with our expectations, measures of IH were negatively correlated with political myside bias across paradigms, political topics, and samples. These relations were robust to controlling for humility. We also examined ideological asymmetries in the relations between IH and political myside bias, finding that IH-bias relations were statistically equivalent in members of the political left and right. Notwithstanding important limitations and caveats, these data establish IH as one of a small handful psychological features known to predict less political myside bias.

CONFIRMATION BIAS AS A KIND OF THINKING ILLUSION

Nowadays people need to navigate the information flow. We process and evaluate a large amount of data. The ability of individuals to process objectively and analyze the obtained information plays an important role in modern society. The important characteristics of a modern person are unbiased beliefs and opinions of others and a critical attitude to one's own thoughts and views. Are we able to evaluate our own thoughts impartially? It is known that there is an obvious difference between an unbiased evaluation of evidence in order to come to an impartial conclusion and building a case to justify a conclusion already drawn. In the first case, the individual seeks evidence on all sides of a task, evaluates the information objectively, and draws the conclusion that the evidence, in the aggregate, seems to dictate. In the second case, the individual selectively, gives undue weight to evidence that supports one's position while neglecting evidence that would tell against it. The article provides a theoretical analysis of the concept of «confirmation bias» («myside bias») in cognitive psychology. It considers the approaches that lead to confirmation bias, identifies confirmation biases in the process of forming a hypothesis, and highlights the characteristics of confirmation bias that distinguish it from other heuristics. Keywords: confirmation bias, heuristics, thinking, positive test strategy, information hypothesis.

What is the Function of Reasoning? On Mercier and Sperber's Argumentative and Justificatory Theories

This paper aims to accessibly present, and then critique, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber's recent proposals for the evolutionary function of human reasoning. I take a critical look at the main source of experimental evidence that they claim as support for their view, namely the confirmation or “myside” bias in reasoning. I object that Mercier and Sperber did not adequately argue for a claim that their case rests on, namely that it is evolutionarily advantageous for you to get other people to believe whatever you antecedently believe. And I give my own argument that this claim is false. I also critically look at their suggestion that reasoning has a justificatory function, functioning as a kind of reputation management tool. I argue this suggestion does not amount to a plausible evolutionary function.

The cognitive foundations of misinformation on science

Populated by many misleading naïve theories, a difficulty understanding the foundations of scientific expertise and conversely, a tendency to trust one’s own intuitions too much and ignore one’s own ignorance, a built-in myside bias, paranoid tendencies, a propensity to simplify when remembering and to exaggerate when communicating, and so forth, the human mind’s evolved complexion is, to say the least, little predisposed to form accurate scientific beliefs. But this needs not be the end of the story, as many of those cognitive proclivities can, under certain conditions, be leveraged to favor accurate belief formation.