Biased representations of controversial information: Certainty and justification beliefs as moderators

Abstract

Pre-existing beliefs bias mental representations of socio-scientific controversies in favour of the perspective(s) that endorse(s) them. Several conditions have been proposed to moderate such belief-biased mental representations of controversial information. The present study examined the effects of readers’ prior beliefs on their mental models of textual information on the level of situation-model and text-base representations. The study further investigated the extent that author status, readers’ certainty and justification beliefs moderate the effect of prior beliefs on the readers’ representations. Sixty-two undergraduate students of English as a foreign language read two texts that provided arguments for and against an established controversy in language education. A recognition task was used to assess their situation-model and text-base strengths. The results revealed that readers’ representations were biased towards the information that supported their beliefs at the level of the situation model but not at the level of the text-base. The results further revealed no main or moderating effects for author status on the interaction of beliefs and readers’ mental models of the information. However, readers’ certainty beliefs and beliefs about justification for knowing were shown to moderate the belief-biased representation of the controversial information.