Rational Learners or Biased Believers: How do children form beliefs in a motivated reasoning context?

Rational Learners or Biased Believers: How do children form beliefs in a motivated reasoning context? Prachi Solanki, Zachary Horne. https://www.cognitionasu.org/s/Evidence-Assimilation-CogSci2018.pdf

Abstract: We often believe what we want, regardless of the available evidence. When evidence confirms our beliefs, we are ready to accept it, but we are skeptical of new evidence when it impugns our beliefs. Researchers have examined the factors that influence how people integrate evidence into their existing beliefs; however, it is unclear what the developmental trajectory of evidence assimilation is. This may be particularly true in situations in which evidence runs contrary to a child’s motivations. In this study, we examined the developmental trajectory of evidence assimilation with children between the ages of 4 and 12 years old. Using a simple judgment task, we tested how children responded to different distributions of evidence for a proposition when they were motivated to believe that proposition was not true. Our results suggest that children accurately tracked the available evidence, even when it was incongruent with what they were motivated to believe.

Keywords: evidence assimilation; motivated reasoning, development, cognition