Abstract
Myside bias occurs when people evaluate evidence, generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own prior opinions and attitudes. Research across a wide variety of myside bias paradigms has revealed a somewhat surprising finding regarding individual differences. The magnitude of the myside bias shows very little relation to intelligence. Avoiding myside bias is thus one rational thinking skill that is not assessed by intelligence tests or even indirectly indexed through its correlation with cognitive ability measures.
References
|
Baron, J. (1995). Myside bias in thinking about abortion. Thinking & Reasoning, 1, 221–235. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Baron, J. (2008). Thinking and deciding (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Evans, J. St. B. T. (2002). The influence of prior belief on scientific thinking. In Carruthers, P., Stich, S., Siegal, M. (Eds.), The cognitive basis of science (pp. 193–210). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Kahneman, D. (2000). A psychological point of view: Violations of rational rules as a diagnostic of mental processes. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 681–683. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Google Scholar | |
|
Klaczynski, P. A. (1997). Bias in adolescents’ everyday reasoning and its relationship with intellectual ability, personal theories, and self-serving motivation. Developmental Psychology, 33, 273–283. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | |
|
Klaczynski, P. A., Lavallee, K. L. (2005). Domain-specific identity, epistemic regulation, and intellectual ability as predictors of belief-based reasoning: A dual-process perspective. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 1–24. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | |
|
Klaczynski, P. A., Robinson, B. (2000). Personal theories, intellectual ability, and epistemological beliefs: Adult age differences in everyday reasoning tasks. Psychology and Aging, 15, 400–416. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | |
|
Kuhn, D. (1991). The skills of argument. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
McKenzie, C. R. M. (2004). Hypothesis testing and evaluation. In Koehler, D. J., Harvey, N. (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of judgment & decision making (pp. 200–219). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U. S. Department of Transportation . (2000). Vehicle design versus aggressivity (DOT HS 809 194). Retrieved from http://www.nhtsa.gov/DOT/NHTSA/NRD/Multimedia/PDFs/Crashworthiness/Aggressivity%20&%20Fleet%20Compatibility/DOT_HS_809194.pdf. Google Scholar | |
|
Perkins, D. N. (1985). Postprimary education has little impact on informal reasoning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 562–571. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Perkins, D. N., Farady, M., Bushey, B. (1991). Everyday reasoning and the roots of intelligence. In Voss, J., Perkins, D., Segal, J. (Eds.), Informal reasoning and education (pp. 83–105). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Google Scholar | |
|
Sá, W., Kelley, C., Ho, C., Stanovich, K. E. (2005). Thinking about personal theories: Individual differences in the coordination of theory and evidence. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 1149–1161. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What intelligence tests miss: The psychology of rational thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Stanovich, K. E. (2011). Rationality and the reflective mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F. (1998). Individual differences in rational thought. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 161–188. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F. (2007). Natural myside bias is independent of cognitive ability. Thinking & Reasoning, 13, 225–247. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F. (2008a). On the failure of intelligence to predict myside bias and one-sided bias. Thinking & Reasoning, 14, 129–167. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F. (2008b). On the relative independence of thinking biases and cognitive ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 672–695. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Taber, C. S., Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50, 755–769. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Toplak, M. E., Stanovich, K. E. (2003). Associations between myside bias on an informal reasoning task and amount of post-secondary education. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 851–860. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Westen, D., Blagov, P., Harenski, K., Kilts, C., Hamann, S. (2006). Neural bases of motivated reasoning: An fMRI study of emotional constraints on partisan political judgment in the 2004 U.S. Presidential election. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 1947–1958. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Wolfe, C. R., Britt, M. A. (2008). The locus of the myside bias in written argumentation. Thinking & Reasoning, 14, 1–27. Google Scholar | Crossref |
