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Related Experiment Videos

Explanation, imagination, and confidence in judgment.

D J Koehler1

  • 1Department of Psychology, Stanford University, California 94305-2130.

Psychological Bulletin
|November 1, 1991
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Generating explanations or imagining scenarios increases belief in that possibility. This occurs because people temporarily assume the hypothesis is true, influencing their evaluation of evidence and information search.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Decision Making
  • Social Psychology

Background:

  • Experimental manipulations often involve generating explanations or imagining scenarios.
  • Previous research indicates a correlation between these tasks and increased confidence in the imagined possibility.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying increased confidence after explanation or imagination tasks.
  • To determine if assuming a hypothesis's truth is the key factor driving this confidence increase.

Main Methods:

  • Review of existing studies employing explanation and imagination manipulations.
  • Analysis of the cognitive processes involved in these tasks, focusing on hypothesis assumption.

Main Results:

Related Experiment Videos

  • People who generate explanations or imagine possibilities subsequently report higher confidence in those possibilities.
  • This effect is attributed to the temporary assumption of the hypothesis's truth during the task.

Conclusions:

  • Tasks requiring a hypothesis to be treated as true can enhance confidence in that hypothesis.
  • This phenomenon impacts problem representation, evidence evaluation, and information search, potentially at the expense of alternative hypotheses.