Changing your mind
When individuals detect an inconsistency in a set of propositions, they tend to change their minds about at least one proposition to resolve the inconsistency. The orthodox view from William James (1907) onward has been that a rational change should be minimal . We propose an alternative hypothesis...
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Published in | Memory & cognition Vol. 37; no. 5; pp. 624 - 631 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
New York
Springer-Verlag
01.07.2009
Springer Springer Nature B.V |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | When individuals detect an inconsistency in a set of propositions, they tend to change their minds about at least one proposition to resolve the inconsistency. The orthodox view from William James (1907) onward has been that a rational change should be
minimal
. We propose an alternative hypothesis according to which individuals seek to resolve inconsistencies by explaining their origins. We report four experiments corroborating the explanatory hypothesis. Experiment 1 showed that participants’ explanations revised general conditional claims rather than specific categorical propositions. Experiment 2 showed that, when explanations did revise the categorical proposition, participants also tended to deny the consequences of a second generalization. Experiment 3 showed that this tendency persists when participants previously affirmed these consequences explicitly. Experiment 4 showed that, when participants could easily explain an inconsistency by revising a generalization, they were more likely to accept the consequences of a second generalization. All four results contravene minimalism but support the explanatory hypothesis. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0090-502X 1532-5946 |
DOI: | 10.3758/MC.37.5.624 |