Belief Bias Effect in Reasoning of Future Teachers

摘要

Belief bias is the tendency to be influenced by the believability of the conclusion when attempting to solve syllogistic reasoning problem. This type of problems is considered as reflection of major critical thinking skill – i.e. putting aside one's prior knowledge and reason from new premises. The paper presents results of a study with 597 future teachers, in which we examined their ability to resist belief bias and whether it can be connected to their cognitive abilities (intelligence measured by Vienna Matrix Test) or cognitive dispositions (Master Rationality Motive Scale). Results showed that participants showed highest belief bias with problems that were either valid, but unbelievable, or invalid but believable with cognitive abilities only weakly correlated with resisting to belief bias (only in case of valid but unbelievable problems). Results are discussed in terms of their implication for rationality debate and newly proposed Stanovich?s tripartite model of human mind.