I extract, and then analyse critically, the epistemological ideas that are implicit in Robin DiAngelo's best-selling book White Fragility and her other writings. On what grounds, according to DiAngelo, can people know what they claim to know? And on what grounds does DiAngelo know what she claims to know?

Are religious beliefs psychologically different from matter-of-fact beliefs? Many scholars say no: that religious people, in a matter-of-fact way, simply think their deities exist. Others say yes: that religious beliefs are more compartmentalized, less certain, and less responsive to evidence. Little research to date has explored whether lay people themselves recognize such a difference. We addressed this question in a series of sentence completion tasks, conducted in five settings that differed both in religious traditions and in language: the US, Ghana, (...) Thailand, China, and Vanuatu. Participants everywhere routinely used different verbs to describe religious versus matter-of-fact beliefs, and they did so even when the ascribed belief contents were held constant and only the surrounding context varied. These findings support the view that people from diverse cultures and language communities recognize a difference in attitude type between religious belief and everyday matter-of-fact belief. (shrink)

Confirmation bias is often used as an umbrella term for many related phenomena. Information searches, evidence interpretation, and memory recall are the three main components of the thinking proces...

There has never been a time in history that we have been bombarded with so much information in the media and on the internet, especially information that may inhibit thoughtful reflection. In conte...

The theory of actively open-minded thinking (AOT) implies standards for good thinking. Two broad aspects of these standards characterise individual differences in their acceptance: myside bias, in which thinking favours possible conclusions that are already strong; and uncertainty aversion, a belief that good thinking results in high confidence. Acceptance of AOT standards is often measured with short questionnaire scales. The present paper reports one study focusing on each of these two biases in the evaluation of the trustworthiness of sources, on (...) the basis of short statements differing in signs of myside bias or of unjustified overconfidence. A 10-item scale measuring largely myside bias predicts sensitivity to both sources of difference in the statements. A third study examines the generality of the two standards across topics. The study used four questions about each topic and an 11-item scale with more items about uncertainty aversion. Individual differences are preserved across topic, although some results imply that individual differences are more pronounced when a standard is seen as more relevant to the content. The two standards are best characterised as two unidimensional factors that are correlated with each other. Thus, individual differences in AOT standards are not unidimensional. (shrink)

A growing body of research suggests that scientific and religious beliefs are often held and justified in different ways. In three studies with 707 participants, we examine the distinctive profiles of beliefs in these domains. In Study 1, we find that participants report evidence and explanatory considerations (making sense of things) as dominant reasons for beliefs across domains. However, cuing the religious domain elevates endorsement of nonscientific justifications for belief, such as ethical considerations (e.g., believing it encourages people to be (...) good), affiliation (what loved ones believe), and intuition (what feels true in one's heart). Study 2 replicates these differences with specific scientific and religious beliefs held with equal confidence, and documents further domain differences in beliefs’ personal importance, openness to revision, and perceived objectivity. Study 3 replicates these differences, further finding that counter‐consensus beliefs about contentious science topics (such as climate change and vaccination) often have properties resembling religious beliefs, while counter‐religious beliefs about religion (e.g., “There is no God”) have properties that more closely resemble beliefs about science. We suggest that beliefs are held and justified within coherent epistemic frameworks, with individuals using different frameworks in different contexts and domains. (shrink)

Dispositional measures of actively open-minded thinking and cognitive reflection both predict reasoning accuracy on conflict problems. Here we investigated their relative impact on meta-reasoning. To this end, we measured reasoning accuracy and two indices of meta-reasoning performance – conflict detection sensitivity and meta-reasoning discrimination – using a ratio-bias task. Our key predictors were actively open-minded thinking and cognitive reflection, and numeracy, cognitive ability, and mindware instantiation were controlled for. Actively open-minded thinking was a better predictor of reasoning accuracy and meta-reasoning (...) discrimination than cognitive reflection, and was the only dispositional measure to significantly predict conflict detection sensitivity. Thus, susceptibility to biased reasoning and meta-reasoning may be better captured by a reasoner’s ability to engage in open-minded thinking than by their ability to engage in reflective thinking. (shrink)