Effects of Belief and Logic on Syllogistic Reasoning

Abstract

Studies of syllogistic reasoning have demonstrated a nonlogical tendency for people to endorse more believable conclusions than unbelievable ones. This belief bias effect is more dominant on invalid syllogisms than valid ones, giving rise to a logic by belief interaction. We report an experiment in which participants' eye movements were recorded in order to provide insights into the nature and time course of the reasoning processes associated with manipulations of conclusion validity and believability. Our main dependent measure was people's inspection times for syllogistic premises, and we tested predictions deriving from three contemporary mental-models accounts of the logic by belief interaction. Results supported recent "selective processing" theories of belief bias (e.g., Evans, 2000; Klauer, Musch, & Naumer, 2000), which assume that the believability of a conclusion biases model construction processes, rather than biasing the search for falsifying models (e.g., Oakhill & Johnson-Laird, 1985) or a response stage of reasoning arising from subjective uncertainty (e.g., Quayle & Ball, 2000). We conclude by suggesting that the eye-movement analyses in reasoning research may provide a useful adjunct to other process-tracing techniques such as verbal protocol analysis.

The intersection between Descriptivism and Meliorism in reasoning research: further proposals in support of ‘soft normativism’

“…One key parallel concerned the observation that ‘conflict’ problems in both paradigms show inflated response times relative to non-conflict problems (cf. Thompson et al, 2003; Ball et al, 2006; Stupple and Ball, 2008; Stupple et al, 2011), which is entirely in line with dual-process predictions and attests to the value of obtaining response-time data as a way to inform theorizing. Stupple et al’s (2013) study also revealed that the supposedly ‘intuitively obvious’ deduction of double negation elimination (see Rips, 1994, pp.…”

“…A further monitoring approach for examining the dynamic aspects of reasoning that we are particularly enthusiastic about is to deploy eye-tracking (e.g., Ball et al, 2003, 2006) to determine the moment-by-moment attentional shifts in processing that arise when participants attempt the visually presented problems that are typically used in reasoning studies (see Ball, 2013a, for a recent summary of key findings deriving from eye-tracking research in reasoning). Eye-tracking studies have, we contend, provided some of the most compelling evidence to date that Type 2 analytic reasoning that is attuned to normative principles plays an important role in determining whether heuristically cued cards are subsequently selected or rejected in the Wason four-card selection task (see Evans and Ball, 2010).…”

“…Eye-tracking studies have, we contend, provided some of the most compelling evidence to date that Type 2 analytic reasoning that is attuned to normative principles plays an important role in determining whether heuristically cued cards are subsequently selected or rejected in the Wason four-card selection task (see Evans and Ball, 2010). Likewise, eye-tracking studies of belief-bias effects (e.g., Ball et al, 2006) have been influential in revealing that people spend longer reasoning about ‘conflict’ syllogisms, where conclusion validity and believability are in competition (i.e., those with invalid-believable conclusions and valid-unbelievable conclusions), relative to ‘non-conflict’ syllogisms, where conclusion validity and believability concur (i.e., those with valid-believable and invalid-unbelievable conclusions). The evidence that conflict problems take longer to process than non-conflict problems is viewed by Stupple and Ball (2008) as indicating that participants are ‘sensitive’ to the fact that the logic of a conclusion and its belief status are in opposition such that extra processing effort has to be allocated to resolving the conflict.…”

The SDT model of belief bias: Complexity, time, and cognitive ability mediate the effects of believability.

“…Klauer et al (2000) suggest, for example, that it may be particularly difficult to construct a coherent semantic model when the elements of a problem conflict with prior beliefs. This might appear at odds with findings that believable invalid conclusions produce the slowest judgments (Ball, Phillips, Wade, & Quayle, 2006;Stupple et al, 2011;Thompson, Striemer, Reikoff, Gunter, & Campbell, 2003). However, overall response time includes not only the construction of a problem representation but also the decision process that follows.…”

Theories of the syllogism: A meta-analysis.

“…But beliefs do affect one-model syllogisms too (Oakhill, Johnson-Laird, & Garnham, 1989;Gilinsky & Judd, 1994). One reason for this effect is that individuals examine the plausibility of their conclusions and are likely to be more cautious in accepting incredible conclusions than in accepting credible ones (Ball, Philips, Wade, & Quayle, 2006;Oakhill et al, 1989;Thompson, Striemer, Reikoff, Gunter, & Campbell, 2003). Their caution is a kind of response bias, but as Garnham and Oakhill (2005) showed, it is not of a kind that Klauer, Musch, and Naumer (2000) included in their multinomial model of individual differences.…”