Cognitive Processes Supporting Epistemic Rationality in Belief Formation and Revision

人们根据收集到的证据(例如，通过他们自己的观察、与他人的对话和新闻媒体)形成并修改他们对世界的信念。然而，有时人们持有的信念似乎与他们现有的证据背道而驰。学者和政策制定者强调了在一个数字连接的世界里，更好地理解促进证据增长的条件的紧迫性--不一致的信念(例如，关于寨卡病毒原因的阴谋论，对气候变化的否认)。认知心理学最近的研究表明，这种“认知上的非理性”(与现有证据相矛盾的信念)并非源于智力缺乏，而是源于未能自愿参与分析思维过程(例如，逻辑推理或统计推理)。这项拟议的研究有三个目的，以加深我们对认知非理性背后的认知过程的理解。首先，将开发一系列认知任务，以衡量各种基本过程的参与和执行情况，这些基本过程在信念的形成和修订中充当“基石”(例如，生成假设、评估个别证据的诊断价值、组合所有证据以得出总体信念评估、根据新证据更新现有信念)。这些任务将允许评估人们从事分析思维倾向的系统性差异是限于特定的潜在认知过程，还是更具全球性。其次，这些任务将被用来测试“理性清单”的有效性，该清单鼓励人们更多地参与分析思维，通过促使人们评估和采用替代思维策略，这些策略可以在根据现有证据评估目标信念时发挥作用。第三，前两个目标的完成结果将应用于更复杂的现实世界信念和证据收集过程，例如通过互联网搜索可用的证据来评估主张的有效性(例如，手机辐射对健康有害)。拟议的研究将有助于新兴的认知理论，这些理论将在算法(例如，学习规则的执行)和反思(例如，认知调节)水平上区分推理过程。拟议研究的结果可以应用于开发更有效的公共传播，例如由政府服务组织进行，这些公共传播更好地适应人们如何获得证据不一致的信念(例如，对证据支持的政策和计划产生阻力)。

People form and revise their beliefs about the world based on evidence they gather (e.g., through their own observations, conversations with other people, and the news media). Sometimes, though, people hold beliefs that seem to be contrary to the evidence available to them. Scholars and policy makers have underscored the urgency of better understanding conditions that foster the growth of evidence-inconsistent beliefs (e.g., conspiracy theories about the cause of the Zika virus, denial of climate change) in a digitally-connected world. Recent research in cognitive psychology suggests that such “epistemic irrationality” (beliefs that contradict the available evidence) stems, not from a lack of intelligence, but rather from a failure to voluntarily engage analytic thinking processes (e.g., logical or statistical reasoning). The proposed research has three objectives to further our understanding of the cognitive processes underlying epistemic irrationality. First, a collection of cognitive tasks will be developed that measure the engagement and execution of various fundamental processes that serve as “building blocks” in the formation and revision of beliefs (e.g., generation of hypotheses, evaluation of the diagnostic value of individual pieces of evidence, combination of all the evidence to arrive at an overall belief assessment, updating of existing beliefs in light of new evidence). These tasks will allow assessment of whether systematic differences between people in their inclination to engage in analytic thinking are restricted to specific underlying cognitive processes or are more global in nature. Second, these tasks will then be used to test the effectiveness of a “rationality checklist” that encourages greater engagement of analytic thinking, by prompting people to evaluate and adopt alternative thinking strategies that could be brought to bear in assessing a target belief in light of the available evidence. Third, findings from completion of the first two objectives will be applied to more complex real-world beliefs and evidence-gathering processes, such as those used to evaluate the validity of a claim (e.g., that cellphone radiation is a health hazard) through an internet search for available evidence. The proposed research will contribute to emerging theories of cognition that distinguish reasoning processes that operate at the algorithmic (e.g., execution of learned rules) and reflective (e.g., epistemic regulation) levels. Findings from the proposed research could be applied to the development of more effective public communications, for example by government service organizations, that are better attuned to how people can arrive at evidence-inconsistent beliefs (e.g., that produce resistance to evidence-supported policies and programs).