{"pk":27081,"title":"Belief Updating and Argument Evaluation","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Studies of how evidence affects beliefs sometimes show be-lief polarization in response to mixed evidence. However, thenature of the mental processes leading to change in opinion isup for debate. Different accounts of how people process evi-dence and then update their beliefs make different predictions,especially about one-sided evidence, which is rarely examined.We presented subjects with multiple text arguments regardingsocio-political topics as one-sided or mixed evidence. Partici-pants rated arguments differently according to their extant be-liefs, which is consistent with accounts of motivated reason-ing. They did not polarize afterward, instead showing evi-dence of belief updating according to Bayesian principles: be-lief change is sensitive to prior opinions and to the directionand quality of the evidence presented. These data support re-thinking some of the mental processes underlying incorpora-tion of evidence into a personal belief structure.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"cognitive science; decision making; reasoning;language and thought; psychology; motivated reasoning; ra-tionality"}],"section":"Posters: Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8383f2zt","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Megan","middle_name":"D.","last_name":"Bardolph","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, San Diego","department":""},{"first_name":"Seana","middle_name":"","last_name":"Coulson","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, San Diego","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2017-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27081/galley/16717/download/"}]}