Implicit and explicit processes in a hypothesis testing task.
We present the results of two experiments investigating the factors that determine responding on the pseudo-diagnosticity task. In Expt 1 we manipulated people's beliefs about the degree to which an initial piece of evidence supported a focal hypothesis and found decreased pseudo-diagnostic (PD) responding when the evidence offered low support for the focal hypothesis. In Expt 2 we manipulated the instructions given to participants. We found that instructions to select evidence to help decide between the focal and the complementary hypotheses produced fewer PD responses than both instructions to decide whether the focal hypothesis was the case and instructions to decide whether its complement was the case. The results are interpreted within the framework of recent dual process theories of reasoning.
St B T Evans
Jonathan
J
Centre for Thinking and Language, Department of Psychology, University of Plymouth, UK.
Venn
Simon
S
Feeney
Aidan
A
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis