The Role of Cognitive Conflict in Understanding and Learning from Multiple Perspectives

Abstract

This chapter focuses on readers’ processing of discrepant information that might be encountered within a single text, between multiple texts, or when content conflicts with the reader’s prior knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. Based on theoretical models of single and multiple text comprehension, we describe the cognitive processes in which readers engage when they experience cognitive conflict, and when they engage in strategies that serve to re-establish cognitive equilibrium. We focus specifically on the role that sourcing strategies play at different stages of processing, including in attributing the origin of cognitive conflict, in explaining why a discrepancy has occurred, in resolving coherence breaks by evaluating each source’s credibility, and in mentally representing conflicting perspectives. Based on our conceptual and empirical analysis, we discuss implications for adapting current theoretical models to consider readers’ attention to, and evaluation and representation of source perspectives, and we consider how the mechanisms described could be tested empirically.