title: Iffy beliefs: conditional thinking and belief change.
abstract: The ability to entertain possibilities and draw inferences about them is essential to human intelligence. We examine the hypothesis that conditional if-then statements trigger a mental simulation process in which people suppose the antecedent (if statement) to be true and evaluate the consequent (then statement) in that context. On the assumption that supposing an event to be true increases belief that the event has occurred or will occur, this hypothesis is consistent with the claim that evaluating a conditional will heighten belief in its antecedent more than in its consequent. Two experiments, employing conditionals of the form If animal A has property X, then animal B will have property X, in which X was a property that people could not readily relate to the animals, supported this claim. The effect was stronger following the evaluation of conditionals with dissimilar animal categories.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Sciences and Education, University of Trento, Trento, Italy. k.hadjichristidis@unitn.it
authors.forename: Constantinos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hadjichristidis
authors.forename: Simon J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Handley
authors.forename: Steven A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Sloman
authors.forename: Jonathan St B T
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Evans
authors.forename: David E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Over
authors.forename: Rosemary J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Stevenson
mesh_terms: D032882:Comprehension; D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008128:Logic; D011337:Probability Learning; D011340:Problem Solving; D011932:Reading; D012718:Set, Psychology; D013850:Thinking