Chapter 21 - The Elusive Search for Individual Differences in Myside Thinking
from Individual Differences in Beliefs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2022
Summary
Myside bias occurs when people evaluate evidence, generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own prior opinions and attitudes. Myside bias is displayed by people in all demographic groups, and it is exhibited even by expert reasoners, the highly educated, and the highly intelligent. Surprisingly, however, the degree of myside bias shown is not predictable from individual difference variables that we would expect to be associated with it. For example, it is not attenuated by cognitive sophistication, as measured by cognitive ability or thinking dispositions. Another way in which myside bias is an outlier bias is that, in most circumstances, it shows very little domain generality and appears to be very content dependent. Individuals who display high myside bias on one issue do not necessarily show high myside bias on another, unrelated issue. Because of these unusual characteristics, myside bias needs a different type of model – a content-based model, such as those deriving from memetic theory.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cognitive Science of BeliefA Multidisciplinary Approach, pp. 465 - 487Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
References
Abelson, R. P. (1986) Beliefs are like possessions. Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour, 16, 223–250.Google Scholar
Aczel, B., Bago, B., Szollosi, A., Foldes, A., & Lukacs, B. (2015) Measuring individual differences in decision biases: methodological considerations. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(1770). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01770Google Scholar
Ahn, W.-Y., Kishida, K., Gu, X. et al. (2014) Nonpolitical images evoke neural predictors of political ideology. Current Biology, 24(22), 2693–2699.Google Scholar
Alloy, L. B. & Tabachnik, N. (1984) Assessment of covariation by humans and animals: the joint influence of prior expectations and current situational information. Psychological Review, 91, 112–149.Google Scholar
Babcock, L., Loewenstein, G., Issacharoff, S., & Camerer, C. (1995) Biased judgments of fairness in bargaining. The American Economic Review, 85, 1337–1343.Google Scholar
Block, J. & Block, J. H. (2006) Nursery school personality and political orientation two decades later. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 734–749.Google Scholar
Bolsen, T. & Palm, R. (2020) Motivated reasoning and political decision making. In Thompson, W. (Ed.). Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Politics. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.923. https://oxfordre.com/politics/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-923Google Scholar
Bouchard, T. J. & McGue, M. (2003) Genetic and environmental influences on human psychological differences. Journal of Neurobiology, 54, 4–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A. M., & Fischhoff, B. (2007) Individual differences in adult decision-making competence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 938–956.Google Scholar
Clark, C. J., Liu, B. S., Winegard, B. M., & Ditto, P. H. (2019) Tribalism is human nature. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28, 587–592.Google Scholar
Clark, C. J. & Winegard, B. M. (2020) Tribalism in war and peace: the nature and evolution of ideological epistemology and its significance for modern social science. Psychological Inquiry, 31, 1–22.Google Scholar
Clements, Z. A. & Munro, G. D. (2021) Biases and their impact on opinions of transgender bathroom usage. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 51 370–383. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12741Google Scholar
Dawes, R. M. (1989) Statistical criteria for establishing a truly false consensus effect. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawes, R. M. (1990) The potential nonfalsity of the false consensus effect. In Hogarth, R. M. (Ed.). Insights into decision making (pp. 179–199). University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
De Neve, J.-E. (2015) Personality, childhood experience, and political ideology. Political Psychology, 36, 55–73.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (1995) Darwin’s dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings of life. Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Dentakos, S., Saoud, W., Ackerman, R., & Toplak, M. E. (2019) Does domain matter? Monitoring accuracy across domains. Metacognition and Learning, 14, 413–436. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409–019-09198-4Google Scholar
Ditto, P., Liu, B., Clark, C. et al. (2019a) At least bias Is bipartisan: a meta-analytic comparison of partisan bias in liberals and conservatives. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14, 273–291.Google Scholar
Ditto, P., Liu, B., Clark, C. et al. (2019b) Partisan bias and its discontents. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14, 304–316.Google Scholar
Drummond, C. & Fischhoff, B. (2017) Individuals with greater science literacy and education have more polarized beliefs on controversial science topics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(36), 9587.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Drummond, C. & Fischhoff, B. (2019) Does “putting on your thinking cap” reduce myside bias in evaluation of scientific evidence? Thinking & Reasoning, 25, 477–505.Google Scholar
Edwards, K. & Smith, E. E. (1996) A disconfirmation bias in the evaluation of arguments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 5–24.Google Scholar
Ehret, P. J., Sparks, A. C., & Sherman, D. K. (2017) Support for environmental protection: an integration of ideological-consistency and information-deficit models. Environmental Politics, 26, 253–277.Google Scholar
Eichmeier, A. & Stenhouse, N. (2019) Differences that don’t make much difference: Party asymmetry in open-minded cognitive styles has little relationship to information processing behavior. Research & Politics, 6(3), 2053168019872045. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168019872045Google Scholar
Epley, N. & Gilovich, T. (2016) The mechanics of motivated reasoning. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30(3), 133–140.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T. (2019) Reflections on reflection: the nature and function of Type 2 processes in dual-process theories of reasoning. Thinking and Reasoning, 25, 383–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., Over, D. E., & Manktelow, K. (1993) Reasoning, decision making and rationality. Cognition, 49, 165–187.Google Scholar
Finucane, M. L. & Gullion, C. M. (2010) Developing a tool for measuring the decision-making competence of older adults. Psychology and Aging, 25, 271–288.Google Scholar
Fraley, R. C., Griffin, B. N., Belsky, J., & Roisman, G. I. (2012) Developmental antecedents of political ideology: A longitudinal investigation from birth to age 18 years. Psychological Science, 23, 1425–1431.Google Scholar
Frederick, S. (2005) Cognitive reflection and decision making. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19, 25–42.Google Scholar
Funk, C. L., Smith, K. B., Alford, J. R. et al. (2013) Genetic and environmental transmission of political orientations. Political Psychology, 34, 805–819.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gentzkow, M. & Shapiro, J. (2006) Media bias and reputation. Journal of Political Economy, 114, 280–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guay, B. & Johnston, C. (2021) Ideological asymmetries and the determinants of politically motivated reasoning. American Journal of Political Science, 65.Google Scholar
Hahn, U. & Harris, A. J. L. (2014) What does it mean to be biased: motivated reasoning and rationality. In Ross, B. H. (Ed.). Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 61(pp. 41–102). Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, L. C. (2011) Education, politics and opinions about climate change evidence for interaction effects. Climatic Change, 104, 231–242.Google Scholar
Harris, E. A. & Van Bavel, J. J. (2021) Preregistered replication of “feeling superior is a bipartisan issue: extremity (not direction) of political views predicts perceived belief superiority”. Psychological Science, 32, 451–458.Google Scholar
Hart, W., Albarracin, D., Eagly, A. H., Brechan, I., Lindberg, M. J., & Merrill, L. (2009) Feeling validated versus being correct: a meta-analysis of selective exposure to information. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 555–588.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hatemi, P. K. & McDermott, R. (2016) Give me attitudes. Annual Review of Political Science, 19, 331–350.Google Scholar
Henry, P. J. & Napier, J. L. (2017) Education is related to greater ideological prejudice. Public Opinion Quarterly, 81, 930–942.Google Scholar
Hoch, S. J. (1987) Perceived consensus and predictive accuracy: the pros and cons of projection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 221–234.Google Scholar
Houston, D. A. & Fazio, R. H. (1989) Biased processing as a function of attitude accessibility: making objective judgments subjectively. Social Cognition, 7, 51–66.Google Scholar
Hufer, A., Kornadt, A. E., Kandler, C., & Riemann, R. (2020) Genetic and environmental variation in political orientation in adolescence and early adulthood: a nuclear twin family analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118, 762–776.Google Scholar
Jones, P. E. (2019) Partisanship, political awareness, and retrospective evaluations, 1956–2016. Political Behavior, 42, 1295–1317. doi:10.1007/s11109-019-09543-yCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joslyn, M. R. & Haider-Markel, D. P. (2014) Who knows best? Education, partisanship, and contested facts. Politics & Policy, 42, 919–947.Google Scholar
Kahan, D. M. (2013) Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection. Judgment and Decision Making, 8, 407–424.Google Scholar
Kahan, D. M. (2015) Climate-science communication and the measurement problem. Political Psychology, 36, 1–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahan, D. M. & Corbin, J. C. (2016) A note on the perverse effects of actively open-minded thinking on climate-change polarization. Research & Politics, 3(4), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168016676705Google Scholar
Kahan, D. M., Hoffman, D. A., Braman, D., Evans, D., & Rachlinski, J. J. (2012) “They saw a protest”: cognitive illiberalism and the speech-conduct distinction. Stanford Law Review, 64(4), 851–906.Google Scholar
Kahan, D. M., Peters, E., Dawson, E., & Slovic, P. (2017) Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government. Behavioural Public Policy, 1, 54–86.Google Scholar
Kahan, D. M., Peters, E., Wittlin, M. et al. (2012) The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nature Climate Change, 2, 732–735.Google Scholar
Kahan, D. M. & Stanovich, K. E. (2016) Rationality and belief in human evolution. Annenberg Public Policy Center Working Paper No. 5. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2838668Google 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
Klaczynski, P. A. (2014) Heuristics and biases: interactions among numeracy, ability, and reflectiveness predict normative responding. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1–13.Google Scholar
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
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
Koehler, J. J. (1993) The influence of prior beliefs on scientific judgments of evidence quality. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 56, 28–55.Google Scholar
Kokis, J., Macpherson, R., Toplak, M., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2002) Heuristic and analytic processing: age trends and associations with cognitive ability and cognitive styles. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 83, 26–52.Google Scholar
Kornblith, H. (1993) Inductive inference and its natural ground. MIT University Press.Google Scholar
Kraft, P. W., Lodge, M., & Taber, C. S. (2015) Why people “Don’t trust the evidence”: motivated reasoning and scientific beliefs. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 658(1), 121–133.Google Scholar
Kuhn, D. & Modrek, A. (2018) Do reasoning limitations undermine discourse? Thinking & Reasoning, 24, 97–116.Google Scholar
Liberali, J. M., Reyna, V. F., Furlan, S., Stein, L. M., & Pardo, S. T. (2012) Individual differences in numeracy and cognitive reflection, with implications for biases and fallacies in probability judgment. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 25, 361–381.Google Scholar
Ludeke, S., Johnson, W., & Bouchard, T. J. (2013) “Obedience to traditional authority:” a heritable factor underlying authoritarianism, conservatism and religiousness. Personality and Individual Differences, 55, 375–380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupia, A., Levine, A. S., Menning, J. O., & Sin, G. (2007) Were Bush tax cut supporters “simply ignorant?” A second look at conservatives and liberals in “Homer Gets a Tax Cut.” Perspectives on Politics, 5, 773–784.Google Scholar
Macpherson, R. & Stanovich, K. E. (2007) Cognitive ability, thinking dispositions, and instructional set as predictors of critical thinking. Learning and Individual Differences, 17, 115–127.Google Scholar
O’Connor, C. & Weatherall, J. O. (2018) Scientific polarization. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 8, 855–875.Google Scholar
Olsson, E. J. (2013) A Bayesian simulation model of group deliberation and polarization. In Zenker, F. (Ed.). Bayesian argumentation (pp. 113–133). Springer.Google Scholar
Oskarsson, S., Cesarini, D., Dawes, C. et al. (2015) Linking genes and political orientations: testing the cognitive ability as mediator hypothesis. Political Psychology, 36, 649–665.Google Scholar
Parker, A. M., Bruine de Bruin, W., Fischhoff, B., & Weller, J. (2018) Robustness of decision-making competence: evidence from two measures and an 11-year longitudinal study. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 31, 380–391.Google Scholar
Parker, A. M. & Fischhoff, B. (2005) Decision-making competence: external validation through an individual differences approach. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 18, 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patel, N., Baker, S. G., & Scherer, L. D. (2019) Evaluating the cognitive reflection test as a measure of intuition/reflection, numeracy, and insight problem solving, and the implications for understanding real-world judgments and beliefs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 2129–2153.Google Scholar
Perkins, D. N. (1985). Postprimary education has little impact on informal reasoning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 562–571.Google Scholar
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). Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977) The “false consensus effect”: an egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 279–301.Google Scholar
Sá, W., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (1999) The domain specificity and generality of belief bias: searching for a generalizable critical thinking skill. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 497–510.Google Scholar
Sarathchandra, D., Navin, M. C., Largent, M. A., & McCright, A. M. (2018) A survey instrument for measuring vaccine acceptance. Preventive Medicine, 109, 1–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simas, E. N., Clifford, S., & Kirkland, J. H. (2020). How empathic concern fuels political polarization. American Political Science Review, 114, 258–269.Google Scholar
Sinayev, A. & Peters, E. (2015) Cognitive reflection vs. calculation in decision making. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(532). doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00532Google Scholar
Spearman, C. (1904) General intelligence, objectively determined and measured. American Journal of Psychology, 15, 201–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. (1999) Who is rational? Studies of individual differences in reasoning. Erlbaum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. (2004) The robot’s rebellion: finding meaning in the age of Darwin. University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. (2021) The bias that divides us: The science and politics of myside thinking. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. & Toplak, M. E. (2019) The need for intellectual diversity in psychological science: our own studies of actively open-minded thinking as a case study. Cognition, 187, 156–166.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. & West, R. F. (1997) Reasoning independently of prior belief and individual differences in actively open-minded thinking. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 342–357.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. & West, R. F. (1998a) Individual differences in rational thought. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 161–188.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. & West, R. F. (1998b) Who uses base rates and P(D/~H)? An analysis of individual differences. Memory & Cognition, 26, 161–179.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. & West, R. F. (2000) Individual differences in reasoning: implications for the rationality debate? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 645–726.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. & West, R. F. (2007) Natural myside bias is independent of cognitive ability. Thinking & Reasoning, 13, 225–247.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. & West, R. F. (2008) On the failure of intelligence to predict myside bias and one-sided bias. Thinking & Reasoning, 14, 129–167.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F., & Toplak, M. E. (2016) The rationality quotient: toward a test of rational thinking. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Stenhouse, N., Myers, T. A., Vraga, E. K., Kotcher, J. E., Beall, L., & Maibach, E. W. (2018) The potential role of actively open-minded thinking in preventing motivated reasoning about controversial science. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 57, 17–24.Google Scholar
Taber, C. S. & Lodge, M. (2006) Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50, 755–769.Google Scholar
Tappin, B. M., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2020) Thinking clearly about causal inferences of politically motivated reasoning. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 34, 81–87.Google Scholar
Tetlock, P. E. (1986) A value pluralism model of ideological reasoning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 819–827.Google Scholar
Tetlock, P. E. (2002) Social functionalist frameworks for judgment and choice: intuitive politicians, theologians, and prosecutors. Psychological Review, 109, 451–471.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Toner, K., Leary, M. R., Asher, M. W., & Jongman-Sereno, K. P. (2013) Feeling superior is a bipartisan issue: extremity (not direction) of political views predicts perceived belief superiority. Psychological Science, 24, 2454–2462.Google Scholar
Toplak, M. E., Liu, E., Macpherson, R., Toneatto, T., & Stanovich, K. E. (2007) The reasoning skills and thinking dispositions of problem gamblers: a dual-process taxonomy. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 20, 103–124.Google Scholar
Toplak, M. E. & Stanovich, K. E. (2002) The domain specificity and generality of disjunctive reasoning: searching for a generalizable critical thinking skill. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 197–209.Google Scholar
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
Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2011) The Cognitive Reflection Test as a predictor of performance on heuristics and biases tasks. Memory & Cognition, 39, 1275–1289.Google Scholar
Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2014a) Assessing miserly processing: an expansion of the Cognitive Reflection Test. Thinking & Reasoning, 20, 147–168.Google Scholar
Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2014b) Rational thinking and cognitive sophistication: development, cognitive abilities, and thinking dispositions. Developmental Psychology, 50, 1037–1048.Google Scholar
Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124–1131.Google Scholar
Twito, L. & Knafo-Noam, A. (2020) Beyond culture and the family: evidence from twin studies on the genetic and environmental contribution to values. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 112, 135–143.Google Scholar
Van Bavel, J. J. & Pereira, A. (2018) The partisan brain: an identity-based model of political belief. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(3), 213–224.Google Scholar
Van Boven, L., Ramos, J., Montal-Rosenberg, R., Kogut, T., Sherman, D. K., & Slovic, P. (2019) It depends: partisan evaluation of conditional probability importance. Cognition, 188, 51–63.Google Scholar
Viator, R. E., Harp, N. L., Rinaldo, S. B., & Marquardt, B. B. (2020) The mediating effect of reflective-analytic cognitive style on rational thought. Thinking & Reasoning, 26, 1–33.Google Scholar
Weaver, E. A. & Stewart, T. R. (2012) Dimensions of judgment: factor analysis of individual differences. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 25, 402–413.Google Scholar
Weller, J., Ceschi, A., Hirsch, L., Sartori, R., & Costantini, A. (2018) Accounting for individual differences in decision-making competence: personality and gender differences. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2258–2258.Google Scholar
Westen, D., Blagov, P., 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
Westwood, S. J., Iyengar, S., Walgrave, S., Leonisio, R., Miller, L., & Strijbis, O. (2018) The tie that divides: cross-national evidence of the primacy of partyism. European Journal of Political Research, 57, 333–354.Google Scholar
Wynn, K. (2016) Origins of value conflict: babies do not agree to disagree. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(1), 3–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yudkin, D., Hawkins, S., & Dixon, T. (2019) The perception gap: how false impressions are pulling Americans apart. More in Common. https://psyarxiv.com/r3h5q/Google Scholar
Accessibility standard: Unknown
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
Accessibility compliance for the HTML of this chapter is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.