Empirical Research in the Lay Epistemic Framework

Abstract

The lay epistemic model recently has been used to generate new research concerning several topics in cognitive social psychology. In accordance with the integrative character of the present conceptual framework, the pertinent empirical research spans a broad range of previously explored areas to which it introduces a new point of view. The work to be presently reviewed can be classified into three categories dealing with different factors assumed to affect judgmental behavior: (1) epistemic motivations, (2) the “logic” of hypothesis validation, and (3) the contents of knowledge structures. In the sections that follow, these lines of research are considered in turn.