The Effect Of Problem Difficulty On Belief Bias In Syllogistic Reasoning

According to deductive reasoning,humans are always biased under the influence of their existing knowledge and belief in their reasoning,judging and decision making.Dual-process theory generally accounts of the belief-bias in deductive reasoning.However,default Intervention Model and Parallel Competition Model made different arguments on the interaction of dual processing from the perspective of problem difficulty.In previous studies,scholars adopted different reasoning tasks as problem difficulties.The Default Intervention Model was commonly assumed that dual processing is immune to problem difficulty,belief bias relied on speed-asymmetry explanation of heuristic processing(system 1)and analytic processing(system 2).Whereas the Parallel Competition Model posit that the dual processing is subject to problem difficulty,belief bias based on mutual competitive effect of heuristic processing and analytic processing.In reality,the difficulty of reasoning tasks exists different strategy processing and tasks conversions.It is curious whether the difficulty of reasoning structure and reasoning content in the same task could make the same impacts on belief bias of reasoning.Recent studies have found that intuitive logic could exist in heuristic processing,but limited to simple reasoning tasks.Therefore,the aim of the current study is to explore the effect and processing mechanism of problem difficulty on belief bias in syllogistic reasoning.The current study examined the effect of the belief-logic conflict on the accuracy and latency and confidence of responses from participants who were asked to solve syllogistic reasoning problems.Experiment 1 explored the impact of problems difficulty on the bias response in syllogistic reasoning,and tested the existence of intuitive logic and belief bias.Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 was set time pressure and working memory tasks on the basis of time pressure,to explore the impact of problem difficulty on belief bias in syllogistic reasoning.The result showed as follows:(1)problem difficulty affects belief judgment and reasoning at rapid-response stage,while the form of problem difficulty affects the logic judgment and reasoning at final-response stage;(2)when participants solved simple and complex problems,belief-logic conflict influenced belief judgments but had no effects on logical judgments.The influence of belief judgment is greater than that of logical judgment.(3)when participants solve different difficulties of reasoning problems,belief-logic conflict is significant at different response-stages;(4)problem difficulty have no effect on logical judgement at the rapid response,while the relative difficulty of syllogistic reasoning affects on logical judgement at the final-response stage;The effect of reasoning at the rapid-response stage is greater than that of the final-response stage.In conclusion,the finding supported that problem difficulty has inhibitory effect on syllogistic reasoning.In the rapid-response stage,system 1 processing could automatically generate intuitive logical response,causing early belief bias without clear consciousness.In the final-response stage,system 1 and system 2 processing could generate belief bias with cognitive efforts.The three-stage dual-process model could explain different belief bias in syllogistic reasoning.