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A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons (Columba Livia)
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Published on: September 7, 2018

Changing your mind.

Clare R Walsh1, P N Johnson-Laird

  • 1Centre for Thinking and Language, School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, England. clare.walsh@plymouth.ac.uk

Memory & Cognition
|June 3, 2009
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

People resolve logical inconsistencies by explaining their origins, not just by making minimal changes. This explanatory approach revises general claims and influences acceptance of related consequences.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Decision Making
  • Logic and Reasoning

Background:

  • Individuals encountering inconsistencies adjust beliefs to restore coherence.
  • The traditional view posits that rational belief revision should be minimal.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To propose and test an alternative hypothesis: individuals resolve inconsistencies by explaining their origins.
  • To investigate whether belief revision is driven by explanation rather than minimalism.

Main Methods:

  • Four experiments were conducted to test the explanatory hypothesis against the minimalism hypothesis.
  • Participants' belief revisions and explanations for inconsistencies were analyzed.

Main Results:

  • Explanations primarily revised general conditional claims over specific propositions.
  • Revising categorical propositions led to denying consequences of other generalizations.
  • This denial persisted even when consequences were previously affirmed.
  • Easily explaining inconsistencies via generalization revision increased acceptance of secondary consequences.

Conclusions:

  • Findings contradict the minimalism principle in belief revision.
  • The results support an explanatory hypothesis, suggesting individuals prioritize explaining inconsistencies.
  • Belief revision is influenced by the ease and nature of explanations sought to resolve cognitive dissonance.