Browsing by Author "Lundie, Michael James"
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Item The Metacognitive Underpinnings of Confirmation Bias and Its Political Consequences(2022-08-01T05:00:00.000Z) Lundie, Michael James; Krawczyk, Daniel C; Golden , Richard M; Santoro, Lauren; Seaman, Kendra; Spence, Jeffrey SNumerous psychological studies on human reasoning attest to the mind’s pervasive tendency toward confirmation bias, consisting of a reluctance to change one’s mind by selectively integrating confirmatory evidence while underweighting contrary evidence. Among its pernicious effects is the political polarization it fosters, a result of the aggregation of like-minded individuals united by allegiance to a particular set of beliefs. The aim of this study is to shed light on how one’s ability to calibrate confidence to appropriately reflect available evidence, known as metacognitive sensitivity, reduces vulnerability to confirmation bias, along with facets of polarization it tends to foster in the political domain. The findings indicate that metacognitive sensitivity attenuates confirmation bias, operationalized as integration of disconfirmatory evidence, in the context of low-level perceptual decisions, but not when it comes to higher-order analytical decisions. When applied to political thought and behavior, individual differences in this capacity were incorporated into cognitive models demonstrating that metacognitive sensitivity attenuates dogmatic intolerance. However, it does not predict political ideological stance on the liberal-to-conservative spectrum, conspiratorial ideation, or vulnerability to misinformation representative of content found in online media. Measures that demonstrate lower susceptibility to confirmation bias (i.e., increased integration of disconfirmatory evidence) were associated with reduced levels of both right-wing and left-wing conspiratorial ideation as well as higher pro-democratic attitudes. Therefore, metacognitive sensitivity and resistance to confirmation bias together play a significant role in promoting more tolerant attitudes toward those who do not share one’s political beliefs while remaining open-minded and sensitive to information contrary to one’s strongly held beliefs.