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Related Concept Videos

Cognitive Dissonance01:38

Cognitive Dissonance

Social psychologists have documented that feeling good about ourselves and maintaining positive self-esteem is a powerful motivator of human behavior (Tavris & Aronson, 2008). In the United States, members of the predominant culture typically think very highly of themselves and view themselves as good people who are above average on many desirable traits (Ehrlinger, Gilovich, & Ross, 2005). Often, our behavior, attitudes, and beliefs are affected when we experience a threat to our...
Fundamental Attribution Error01:14

Fundamental Attribution Error

According to some social psychologists, people tend to overemphasize internal factors as explanations—or attributions—for the behavior of other people. They tend to assume that the behavior of another person is a trait of that person, and to underestimate the power of the situation on the behavior of others. They tend to fail to recognize when the behavior of another is due to situational variables, and thus to the person’s state. This erroneous assumption is called the fundamental attribution...
Hindsight Biases01:12

Hindsight Biases

Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Can you relate this to the phrase "Hindsight is 20/20" now?
Cause and Effect01:53

Cause and Effect

While variables are sometimes correlated because one does cause the other, it could also be that some other factor, a confounding variable, is actually causing the systematic movement in our variables of interest. For instance, as sales in ice cream increase, so does the overall rate of crime. Is it possible that indulging in your favorite flavor of ice cream could send you on a crime spree? Or, after committing crime do you think you might decide to treat yourself to a cone?
Understanding Deception01:14

Understanding Deception

Deception is a pervasive aspect of human communication. Empirical studies have shown that most individuals engage in some form of deceit on a daily basis, with approximately 20% of social exchanges involving deceptive elements. Lying follows a developmental trajectory, peaking during adolescence and declining with age, possibly due to the maturation of cognitive control and social accountability.Cognitive and Social Factors in Deception DetectionDespite its prevalence, accurately detecting...
Confirmation Biases01:31

Confirmation Biases

The confirmation bias is the tendency to focus on information that confirms our existing beliefs and ignore information that is inconsistent with our expectations. For example, if you think that your professor is not very nice, you notice all of the instances of rude behavior exhibited by the professor while ignoring the countless pleasant interactions he is involved in on a daily basis. Have you ever fallen prey to the confirmation bias, either as the source or target of such bias?

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 24, 2026

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies
05:22

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

Published on: May 9, 2019

Hidden conflicts: explanations make inconsistencies harder to detect.

Sangeet S Khemlani1, P N Johnson-Laird

  • 1Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC 20375, United States. skhemlani@gmail.com

Acta Psychologica
|February 25, 2012
PubMed
Summary

Creating explanations for inconsistencies makes them harder to detect. This psychological tendency, while resolving logical conflicts, impairs future inconsistency detection.

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Last Updated: May 24, 2026

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies
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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Decision Making
  • Logic and Reasoning

Background:

  • Humans often encounter logically inconsistent information.
  • Resolving inconsistencies is psychologically important, often prioritized over minimal revision.
  • Explanations serve to bridge gaps and resolve apparent contradictions.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the impact of generating explanations on the subsequent detection of logical inconsistencies.
  • To determine if explaining inconsistencies reduces the ability to identify them later.
  • To differentiate the effect of explanation from mere evaluation or justification.

Main Methods:

  • Five experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis.
  • Participants explained inconsistencies between sets of propositions.
  • Control groups evaluated or justified surprising events, or acted as their own controls.

Main Results:

  • Participants who explained inconsistencies were significantly less likely to detect them subsequently.
  • The effect was robust across multiple experimental designs, ruling out demand characteristics.
  • Control conditions confirmed participants' ability to detect similar inconsistencies when not explaining them.

Conclusions:

  • Generating explanations for inconsistencies leads individuals to re-interpret information, making inconsistencies less apparent.
  • This cognitive process, while resolving immediate conflict, comes at the cost of reduced future detection accuracy.
  • Explanations can mitigate the negative impact of logical inconsistencies but impair the ability to identify them.