Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T05:34:18.218Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 26 - Building Better Beliefs through Actively Open-Minded Thinking

from Toward Better Beliefs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

By
S. Emlen Metz
Edited by
Julien Musolino ,
Joseph Sommer  and
Pernille Hemmer
Julien Musolino
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Joseph Sommer
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Pernille Hemmer
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Get access

Summary

The accelerating development of technological power over ourselves and our environment raises the stakes of getting our beliefs right. I suggest that we can significantly improve our processes of belief formation by increasing actively open-minded thinking (AOT). Actively open-minded thinking helps us form more accurate and well-rounded beliefs by increasing the depth and – more importantly – the breadth of information search and inference. Because individuals do not always have time for adequate investigation, AOT is also a valuable indicator of which epistemic authorities are most likely to have reached accurate conclusions via effective methods. It is associated with better reasoning across a wide variety of contexts, leading to beliefs that are more accurate, more complete, and less biased. Yet it is not regularly taught in schools, nor is it a feature of typical public discourse. I suggest several strategies for increasing this cognitive habit in school and society.

Keywords

beliefcritical thinkingactively open-minded thinkinginformation searchmisinformationauthoritydialogueprobabilistic reasoningEthics Bowl
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cognitive Science of Belief
A Multidisciplinary Approach
 , pp. 574 - 591
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allcott, H. & Gentzkow, M. (2017) Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, J. (1985) Rationality and intelligence. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Baron, J. (1995) Myside bias in thinking about abortion. Thinking & Reasoning, 1(3), 221–235.Google Scholar
Baron, J. (1988/2008) Thinking and deciding, 4th Ed. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Baron, J. (2017) Comment on Kahan and Corbin: can polarization increase with actively open-minded thinking? Research and Politics, 4(1), 1–4 https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168016688122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, J. (2019) Actively open-minded thinking in politics. Cognition, 188, 8–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baron, J., Gürçay, B., & Metz, S. E. (2017) Reflection, intuition, and actively open- minded thinking. In Toplak, M., & Weller, J. (Eds.). Individual differences in judgment and decision making from a developmental context (pp. 107–126). Routledge.Google Scholar
Baron, J. & High, D. (2020) People who endorse actively open-minded thinking (AOT) are sensitive to cues indicating AOT of sources. Poster. www.sjdm.org/presentations/2019-Poster-Baron-Jonathan-endorse-AOT-cues.pdfGoogle Scholar
Baron, J., Scott, S., Fincher, K., & Metz, S. E. (2015) Why does the Cognitive Reflection Test (sometimes) predict utilitarian moral judgment (and other things)? Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 4(3), 265–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronstein, M., Pennycook, G., Bear, A., Rand, D., & Cannon, T. (2019) Reduced analytic and actively open-minded thinking help to explain the link between belief in fake news and delusionality, dogmatism, and religious fundamentalism. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3172140Google Scholar
Cacioppo, J. T. & Petty, R. E. (1982) The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(1), 116–131.Google Scholar
Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., & Feng Kao, C. (1984) The efficient assessment of need for cognition. Journal of Personality Assessment, 48(3), 306–307.Google Scholar
Carpenter, J., Preotiuc-Pietro, D., Clark, J. et al. (2018) The impact of actively open-minded thinking on social media communication. Judgment & Decision Making, 13(6), 562–574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cederblom, J. (1989) Willingness to reason and the identification of the self. In Maimon, E. P., Nodine, B. F., & O’Connor, F. W. (Eds.). Thinking, Reasoning, and Writing (pp. 147–159). Longman.Google Scholar
Chinn, C. A., O’Donnell, A. M., & Jinks, T. S. (2000) The structure of discourse in collaborative learning. The Journal of Experimental Education, 69(1), 77–97.Google Scholar
Cohen, D. K. & Ball, D. L. (1990) Policy and practice: an overview. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 12(3), 233–239. doi:10.3102/01623737012003233CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cruz, J. A., Frey, W. J., & Sanchez, H. D. (2004) The ethics bowl in engineering ethics at the university of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. Teaching Ethics, 4(2), 15–31.Google Scholar
Cusimano, C. & Lombrozo, T. (2021) Morality justifies motivated reasoning in the folk ethics of belief. Cognition, 209(10451), 1–24.Google Scholar
Di Domenico, G., Sit, J., Ishizaka, A., & Nunan, D. (2021) Fake news, social media and marketing: a systematic review. Journal of Business Research, 124, 329–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, S. & Meier, P. (1989) Constructive thinking: a broad coping variable with specific components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 332–350.Google Scholar
Erwin, T. D. (1981) Manual for the Scale of Intellectual Development. Developmental Analytics.Google Scholar
Erwin, T. D. (1983) The scale of intellectual development: measuring Perry’s scheme. Journal of College Student Personnel, 24, 6–12.Google Scholar
Fay, A. L. & Klahr, D. (1996) Knowing about guessing and guessing about knowing: preschoolers’ understanding of indeterminacy. Child Development, 67(2), 689–716.Google Scholar
Frederick, S. (2005) Cognitive reflection and decision making. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(4), 24–42.Google Scholar
Gürçay-Morris, B. (2016) The use of alternative reasons in probabilistic judgment. Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/baron/theses/GurcayMorrisDissertation.pdfGoogle Scholar
Haidt, J. (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814–834.Google Scholar
Haran, U., Ritov, I., & Mellers, B. A. (2013) The role of actively open-minded thinking in information acquisition, accuracy, and calibration. Judgment and Decision Making, 8(3), 188–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahan, D. M. (2017) “Ordinary science intelligence”: a science-comprehension measure for study of risk and science communication, with notes on evolution and climate change. Journal of Risk Research, 20(8), 995–1016.Google Scholar
Kahan, D. M. & Braman, D. (2006) Cultural cognition and public policy. Yale Law & Policy Review, 24, 147–170.Google Scholar
Kahan, D. M. & Corbin, J. C. (2016) A note on the perverse effects of actively open- minded thinking on climate-change polarization. Research and Politics, 3(4), 1–5.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kent, S. (1964) Words of estimative probability. Studies in Intelligence, 8(4), 49–65.Google Scholar
King, P. M. (1992) How do we know? Why do we believe? Learning to make reflective judgments. Liberal Education, 78(1), 2–9.Google Scholar
King, P. M. & Kitchener, K. S. (2004) Reflective judgment: theory and research on the development of epistemic assumptions through adulthood. Educational Psychologist, 39(1), 5–18.Google Scholar
Kokis, J. V., Macpherson, R., Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2002) Heuristic and analytic processing: Age trends and associations with cognitive ability and cognitive styles. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 83(1), 26–52.Google Scholar
Kruglanski, A. W., Webster, D. M., & Klem, A. (1993) Motivated resistance and openness to persuasion in the presence or absence of prior information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(5), 861–876.Google Scholar
Ladenson, R. F. (2001) The educational significance of the ethics bowl. Teaching Ethics, 1(1), 63–78.Google Scholar
Ladenson, R. F. (2018) Ethics bowl: an approach to implementing ethics across the curriculum. In Ethics across the curriculum – Pedagogical perspectives (pp. 289–302). Springer.Google Scholar
Lazer, D. M., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y. et al. (2018) The science of fake news. Science, 359(6380), 1094–1096.Google Scholar
Mason, L. & Boscolo, P. (2004) Role of epistemological understanding and interest in interpreting a controversy and in topic-specific belief change. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 29(2), 103–128.Google Scholar
McNeill, K. L., Gonzalez-Howard, M., Katsh-Singer, R., & Loper, S. (2017) Moving beyond pseudoargumentation: teachers’ enactments of an educative science curriculum focused on argumentation. Science Education, 101(3), 426–457.Google Scholar
Mellers, B., Stone, E., Atanasov, P. et al. (2015) The psychology of intelligence analysis: Drivers of prediction accuracy in world politics. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 21(1), 1–14.Google Scholar
Mellers, B., Ungar, L., Baron, J. et al. (2014) Psychological strategies for winning a geopolitical forecasting tournament. Psychological Science, 25(5), 1106–1115.Google Scholar
Mercier, H. & Sperber, D. (2011) Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34(2), 57–74.Google Scholar
Merrick, A., Green, R., Cunningham, T. V., Eisenberg, L. R., & Hester, D. M. (2016) Introducing the medical ethics bowl. Cambridge Q. Healthcare Ethics, 25, 141–149.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Metz, S. E., Baelen, R. N., & Yu, A. (2020) Actively open-minded thinking in American adolescents. Review of Education, 8(3), 768–799.Google Scholar
Meyer, T. (2012) The intercollegiate ethics bowl: an active learning experience. Marketing Education Review, 22(3), 215–224.Google Scholar
Mill, J. S. (1859) On liberty. J.W. Parker & Son.Google Scholar
Morewedge, C. K., Yoon, H., Scopelliti, I., Symborski, C. W., Korris, J. H., & Kassam, K. S. (2015) Debiasing decisions: improved decision making with a single training intervention. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2(1), 129–140.Google Scholar
Mulhall, P. J., Smith, D. V., Hart, C. E., & Gunstone, R. F. (2017) Contemporary scientists discuss the need for openness and open-mindedness in science and society. Research in Science Education, 47(5), 1151–1168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickerson, R. S. (1998) Confirmation bias: a ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Koehler, D., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2020) On the belief that beliefs should change according to evidence: Implications for conspiratorial, moral, paranormal, political, religious, and science beliefs. Judgment and Decision Making, 15 (4), 476–498.Google Scholar
Perkins, D. (1986/2019) Learning to reason: the influence of instruction, prompts and scaffolding, metacognitive knowledge, and general intelligence on informal reasoning about everyday social and political issues. Judgment and Decision Making, 14(6), 624–643.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perkins, D. (1995) Outsmarting IQ: the emerging science of learnable intelligence. Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Perkins, D. & Ritchhart, R. (2004) When is good thinking. In Dai, D. Y. & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.), Motivation, emotion, and cognition: Integrative Perspectives on Intellectual Functioning and Development (pp. 351–384). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.Google Scholar
Perry, W. G. (1970) Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: a scheme. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Peters, E., Joseph, S., Day, S., & Garety, P. (2004) Measuring delusional ideation: the 21-item Peters et al. Delusions Inventory (PDI). Schizophrenia Bulletin, 30(4), 1005–1022.Google Scholar
Ranney, M. A. & Clark, D. (2016) Climate change conceptual change: scientific information can transform attitudes. Topics in Cognitive Science, 8(1), 49–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rokeach, M. (1960) The open and closed mind. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Sá, W. C., Kelly, C. N., Ho, C., & Stanovich, K. E. (2005) Thinking about personal theories: individual differences in the coordination of theory and evidence. Personality and Individual Differences, 38(5), 1149–1161.Google Scholar
Sá, W. C., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (1999) The domain specificity and generality of belief bias: searching for a generalizable critical thinking skill. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(3), 497–510.Google Scholar
Sá, W. C. & Stanovich, K. K. (2001) The domain specificity and generality of mental contamination: accuracy and projection in judgments of mental content. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(3), 281–302.Google Scholar
Slater, M. D. & Rouner, D. (1996) How message evaluation and source attributes may influence credibility assessment and belief change. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73(4), 974–991.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. (2011) Rationality and the reflective mind. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. & West, R. F. (1997) Reasoning independently of prior belief and individual differences in actively open-minded thinking. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(2), 342–357.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. & West, R. F. (1998) Individual differences in rational thought. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 127(2), 161–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. & West, R. F. (2007) Natural myside bias is independent of cognitive ability. Thinking and Reasoning, 13(3), 225–247.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. & West, R. F. (2008) On the failure of cognitive ability to predict myside and one-sided thinking biases. Thinking and Reasoning, 14(2), 129–167.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F., & Toplak, M. E. (2013) Myside bias, rational thinking, and intelligence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(4), 259–264.Google Scholar
Svedholm, A. M. & Lindeman, M. (2013) The separate roles of the reflective mind and involuntary inhibitory control in gatekeeping paranormal beliefs and the underlying intuitive confusions. British Journal of Psychology, 104(3), 303–319.Google Scholar
Svedholm, A. M. & Lindeman, M. (2017) Actively open-minded thinking: development of a shortened scale and disentangling attitudes toward knowledge and people. Thinking and Reasoning, 24(1), 21–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swami, V., Voracek, M., Stieger, S., Tran, U. S., & Furnham, A. (2014) Analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories. Cognition, 133(3), 572–585.Google Scholar
Tetlock, P. E. (2002) Social functionalist frameworks for judgment and choice: intuitive politicians, theologians, and prosecutors. Psychological Review, 109(3), 451–471.Google Scholar
Tetlock, P. E., Mellers, B. A., & Scoblic, J. P. (2017) Bringing probability judgments into policy debates via forecasting tournaments. Science, 355(6324), 481–483.Google Scholar
Thompson, V. A., Prowse Turner, J. A., & Pennycook, G. (2011) Intuition, reason, and metacognition. Cognitive Psychology, 63(3), 107–140.Google Scholar
Toplak, M. E. & Stanovich, K. E. (2003) Associations between myside bias on an informal reasoning task and amount of post-secondary education. Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 17(7), 851–860.Google Scholar
Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2014) Rational thinking and cognitive sophistication: development, cognitive abilities, and thinking dispositions. Developmental Psychology, 50(4), 1037–1048.Google Scholar
Wineburg, S. & McGrew, S. (2017) Lateral reading: reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. Stanford History Education Group Working Paper No. 2017-A1Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×