Belief Bias

The interference of prior beliefs and attitudes with people’s reasoning, and what they are willing to accept as logical or illogical.

This involves people’s tendency to reject valid arguments with seemingly-unbelievable conclusions, while having a readiness to endorse invalid arguments with ostensibly-believable conclusions – instead of properly applying logical reasoning when assessing validity, actors are more likely to accept conclusions which appear consistent with their prior beliefs.

For example, the following syllogism is invalid and conflicts with people’s prior beliefs:

No millionaires are hard workers, some rich people are hard workers, therefore: some millionaires are not rich people.

Of college undergraduates tested, only about ten percent will accept such reasoning.

In contrast to this argument:

No addictive things are inexpensive, some cigarettes are inexpensive, therefore: some addictive things are not cigarettes.

Even though the second argument is also invalid, the conclusion conforms to prior beliefs – more than seventy percent of the undergraduates accepted it as valid.

People have a tendency to be influenced by both the nature of the arguments, that is, the arguments’ validity or invalidity, and by the believability of those arguments’ conclusions as understood in terms of whether the reasoning is consistent or inconsistent with actors’ prior beliefs.

The research findings are suggestive that the bias extends to real-world issues and is not restricted to abstract problems in the classroom.

(see also: selective thinking, myside bias, Belief perserverance, cognitive bias, Neutral-evidence principle, Subjective Validation)

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