Perspective effects in nondeontic versions of the Wason selection task

Abstract

Perspective effects in the Wason four-card selection task occur when people choose mutually exclusive sets of cards depending on the perspective they adopt when making their choice. Previous demonstrations of perspective effects have been limited to deontic contexts - that is, problem contexts that involve social duty, like permissions and obligations. In three experiments, we demonstrate perspective effects in nondeontic contexts, including a context much like the original one employed by Wason (1966, 1968). We suggest that perspective effects arise whenever the task uses a rule that can be interpreted biconditionally and different perspectives elicit different counterexamples that match the predicted choice sets. This view is consistent with domain-general theories but not with domain-specific theories of deontic reasoning - for example, pragmatic reasoning schemas and social contract theory - that cannot explain perspective effects in nondeontic contexts.