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Street CNH, Kingstone A. Aligning Spinoza with Descartes: An informed Cartesian account of the truth bias. Br J Psychol. 2016;108(3):453-466doi: 10.1111/bjop.12210.
Street, C. N. H., & Kingstone, A. (2017). Aligning Spinoza with Descartes: An informed Cartesian account of the truth bias. British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953), 108(3), 453-466. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12210
Street, Chris N H, and Kingstone, Alan. "Aligning Spinoza with Descartes: An informed Cartesian account of the truth bias." British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) vol. 108,3 (2017): 453-466. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12210
Street CNH, Kingstone A. Aligning Spinoza with Descartes: An informed Cartesian account of the truth bias. Br J Psychol. 2017 Aug;108(3):453-466. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12210. Epub 2016 Aug 11. PMID: 27511287.
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Br J Psychol. 2017 Aug;108(3):453-466. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12210. Epub 2016 Aug 11.

Aligning Spinoza with Descartes: An informed Cartesian account of the truth bias.

British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953)

Chris N H Street, Alan Kingstone

Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Huddersfield, UK.
  2. International Research Centre for Investigative Psychology, University of Huddersfield, UK.
  3. Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

PMID: 27511287 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12210

Abstract

There is a bias towards believing information is true rather than false. The Spinozan account claims there is an early, automatic bias towards believing. Only afterwards can people engage in an effortful re-evaluation and disbelieve the information. Supporting this account, there is a greater bias towards believing information is true when under cognitive load. However, developing on the Adaptive Lie Detector (ALIED) theory, the informed Cartesian can equally explain this data. The account claims the bias under load is not evidence of automatic belief; rather, people are undecided, but if forced to guess they can rely on context information to make an informed judgement. The account predicts, and we found, that if people can explicitly indicate their uncertainty, there should be no bias towards believing because they are no longer required to guess. Thus, we conclude that belief formation can be better explained by an informed Cartesian account - an attempt to make an informed judgment under uncertainty.

© 2016 The British Psychological Society.

Keywords: Spinozan mind; adaptive lie detector; informed Cartesian; lie detection; truth bias; uncertainty

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