Pilditch, TD;
Custers, R;
(2017)
Communicated beliefs about action-outcomes: The role of initial confirmation in the adoption and maintenance of unsupported beliefs.
Acta Psychologica
10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.04.006.
(In press).
Preview |
Text
Pilditch_1-s2.0-S0001691816303717-main.pdf - Published Version Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
As agents seeking to learn how to successfully navigate their environments, humans can both obtain knowledge through direct experience, and second-hand through communicated beliefs. Questions remain concerning how communicated belief (or instruction) interacts with first-hand evidence integration, and how the former can bias the latter. Previous research has revealed that people are more inclined to seek out confirming evidence when they are motivated to uphold the belief, resulting in confirmation bias. The current research explores whether merely communicated beliefs affect evidence integration over time when it is not of interest to uphold the belief, and all evidence is readily available. In a novel series of on-line experiments, participants chose on each trial which of two options to play for money, being exposed to outcomes of both. Prior to this, they were exposed to favourable communicated beliefs regarding one of two options. Beliefs were either initially supported or undermined by subsequent probabilistic evidence (probabilities reversed halfway through the task, rendering the options equally profitable overall). Results showed that while communicated beliefs predicted initial choices, they only biased subsequent choices when supported by initial evidence in the first phase of the experiment. Findings were replicated across contexts, evidence sequence lengths, and probabilistic distributions. This suggests that merely communicated beliefs can prevail even when not supported by long run evidence, and in the absence of a motivation to uphold them. The implications of the interaction between communicated beliefs and initial evidence for areas including instruction effects, impression formation, and placebo effects are discussed.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Communicated beliefs about action-outcomes: The role of initial confirmation in the adoption and maintenance of unsupported beliefs |
| Location: | Netherlands |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.04.006 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.04.006 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Active learning, Communicated beliefs, Confirmation bias, Instruction effects, Order effects, Probabilistic reversal learning |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1556919 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
