Online assessment of belief biases and their impact on the acceptance of fallacious reasoning

Abstract

Determining the impact of belief bias on everyday reasoning is critical for understanding how our beliefs can influence how we judge arguments. We examined the impact of belief bias on the user’s ability to identify logical fallacies in political arguments. We found that participants had more difficulty identifying logical fallacies in arguments that aligned with their own political beliefs. Interestingly, this effect diminishes with practice. These results suggest that while belief bias is a potential barrier to correctly evaluating everyday arguments, interventions focused on activating rational engagement may mitigate its impact.