The present study examined how argument type (science based vs. personal case based), belief consistency (belief consistent vs. inconsistent) and reading goals (read to evaluate vs. read to learn) influence comprehension and trustworthiness evaluations for claim-conflicting multiple texts. Undergraduates read four conflicting texts about the…

Are the many crises of higher education real, or are they in the eye of the beholder? They are evidently something of both: The crises to which we are characteristically alerted are manifestations in the real of the world and indicate much about our scholars' perceptions and even their values. To say this, however, invites the question: can we…

Previous research has shown that motivation, epistemic beliefs, and perceived social support each have an effect on the way students engage in their learning and can promote a deep approach. The first aim of this study was to measure and compare these effects. Some authors have argued that epistemic beliefs and perceived social support do not have…

This study examined the relationship between pre-service teachers' epistemological views and their assessment conceptions, as well as how epistemological beliefs and their components contribute to the variation in their assessment conceptions. Utilizing a quantitative descriptive correlational research design, data were collected from 197…

How do people come to opposite causal judgments about societal problems, such as whether a public health policy reduced COVID-19 cases? The current research tests an understudied cognitive mechanism in which people may agree about what "actually" happened (e.g., that a public health policy was implemented and COVID-19 cases declined),…

Controversial scientific issues, or socioscientific issues (SSIs), demand the consideration of more than scientific content when constructing decisions. The Justification for Knowing framework (JFK) was developed to categorize the information sources drawn upon when making SSI decisions within the academic domain of natural sciences. These…

Prior research on epistemic beliefs, that is, individuals' views about knowledge and knowing, has mainly focused either on individuals' professed beliefs (as reported in questionnaires) or on their enacted beliefs (as indicated during task processing). However, little is known about the relation between professed and enacted epistemic beliefs. The…

People need to critically comprehend information across multiple sources that express contradictory viewpoints to make decisions on relevant everyday-life issues and participate in the democratic discourse. However, the processing of multiple documents depends on readers' prior beliefs. The present study investigated the moderating effect of…

In this study, we investigated whether people who hold more correct beliefs about verbal cues to deception are also better lie detectors. We investigated police officers and undergraduates' beliefs about (i) cues to deception via an open-ended question and (ii) 17 specific verbal cues, after which participants were asked to judge the truthfulness…

Laypeople are increasingly confronted with scientific controversies, as science concerns many aspects of everyday life. In the present study, we investigated how epistemic beliefs regarding the uncertainty of knowledge (i.e. uncertainty beliefs) and invested mental effort during task processing contribute to how individuals evaluate scientific…

Background: The evaluation of informal arguments is a key component of comprehending scientific texts and scientific literacy. Aim: The present study examined the nomological network of university students' ability to evaluate informal arguments in scientific texts and the relevance of this ability for academic success. Sample: A sample of 225…

When asked to determine whether a syllogistic argument is deductively valid, people are influenced by their prior beliefs about the believability of the conclusion. Recently, two competing explanations for this belief bias effect have been proposed, each based on signal detection theory (SDT). Under a response bias explanation, people set more…

Learning is a process of thinking in which the most significant construct is individuals' awareness of their own learning and their own learning process, in other words, of their own metacognition capacity. This prediction study aimed at identifying the relationship between entrepreneurial dispositions and metacognition, and epistemological…

When people evaluate conclusions, they are often influenced by prior beliefs. Prevalent theories claim that "belief bias" affects the quality of syllogistic reasoning. However, recent work by Dube, Rotello, and Heit (2010) has suggested that belief bias may be a simple response bias. In Experiment 1, receiver operating characteristic…

The Internet is a convenient source of information about science-based topics (e.g., health matters). Whereas experts are familiar with the conventions of "true" scientific discourse and the assessment of scientific information, laypeople may have great difficulty choosing among, evaluating, and deciding on the vast amount of information…