Authors: Oshin Vartanian Ann Nakashima Fethi Bouak Ingrid Smith Joseph V Baranski Bob Cheung
Publish Date: 2012/09/26
Volume: 14, Issue: 1, Pages: 89-98
Abstract
Recently studies have demonstrated that negative valence reduces the magnitude of the beliefbias effect in syllogistic reasoning This effect has been localized in the reasoning stage in the form of increased deliberation on trials where validity and conclusion believability are incongruent Here using signal detection theory we show that the attenuation of belief bias observed when valence was negative can also be evoked by a liberal response bias at the decision stage Indeed when valence was negative participants adopted a more liberal criterion for judging syllogisms as “valid” and were overconfident in their judgments They also displayed less sensitivity in distinguishing between valid and invalid syllogisms Our findings dovetail with recent evidence from memory research suggesting that negative valence can evoke a liberal response bias without improving performance Our novel contribution is the demonstration that the attenuating effect of negative valence on belief bias can take multiples routes—by influencing the decision stage as was the case here the reasoning stage as has been demonstrated elsewhere and potentially both stages
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