Susceptibility to poor arguments: The interplay of cognitive sophistication and attitudes.

Despite everyday argumentation being crucial to human communication and decision-making, the cognitive determinants of argument evaluation are poorly known. This study examined how attitudes and aspects of cognitive sophistication, i.e., thinking styles and scientific literacy, relate to people's acceptance of poorly justified arguments (e.g., unwarranted appeals to naturalness) on controversial topics (e.g., genetically modified organisms (GMOs)). The participants were more accepting of poorly justified arguments that aligned with their attitudes compared to those that opposed their attitudes, and this was true regardless of one's thinking styles or level of scientific literacy. Still, most of the examined aspects of cognitive sophistication were also positively related to fallacy detection. The strongest cognitive predictors of correctly recognizing the fallacies were one's scientific reasoning ability and active open-mindedness. The results thus imply that decreasing misleading attitude effects, and increasing certain aspects of analytic and scientific thinking, could improve argumentation.

Empathizing and systemizing are differentially related to dimensions of autistic traits in the general population.

Empathizing-Systemizing Theory suggests that low empathizing and high systemizing are linked to autistic traits in the general population. Evidence from autistic individuals is convincing, but more research in the normal population is needed. Method: We conducted two surveys (N = 3,345) investigating the relationships between empathizing, systemizing and autistic traits in the general population, using a large variety of self-report instruments and direct performance tests. Results: Strong connections between autistic symptoms, empathizing, and systemizing were found using commonly used measures (Autism Quotient, Systemizing Quotient and Empathizing Quotient). Other measures on empathizing and systemizing found the connections that E-S-theory predicts, but the correlations were a lot more modest. Weak empathizing was related to autism's social difficulties, while systemizing was linked to non-social aspects of autism. Conclusions: The present results support the main tenets of empathizing-systemizing theory, but suggest that earlier findings might be inflated due to overlapping items in the most common assessment instruments.

Antecedentes/objetivo: La Teoría de la Empatía-Sistematización (E-S) sugiere que la baja empatía y la alta sistematización se relacionan con rasgos autistas en la población general. La evidencia científica en sujetos autistas es consistente, pero es necesaria investigación en población normativa. Método: Se realizaron dos investigaciones basadas en encuesta (N = 3.345) sobre la asociación entre empatía, sistematización y rasgos subclínicos autistas en población general haciendo uso de gran variedad de mediciones auto-informadas y pruebas de rendimiento. Resultados: Se hallaron fuertes relaciones consistentes con la teoría E-S entre rasgos autistas, empatía y sistematización de uso común, medidas con índices de uso común (Coeficiente del Espectro Autista, Coeficiente de Empatía y Coeficiente de Sistematización). En otros indicadores de empatía y sistematización se encontraron relaciones en concordancia con la teoría E-S, pero las correlaciones fueron mucho más modestas. Se obtuvo una relación entre baja empatía y las dificultades sociales propias del autismo, mientras que la sistematización se relacionó con aquellos aspectos no sociales del autismo. Conclusiones: Este trabajo corrobora los principios esenciales de la Teoría de la Empatía-Sistematización, pero sugiere a su vez que resultados previos pudieran estar sesgados debido al solapamiento de ítems en los instrumentos de medición más comúnmente usados.

Empathizing and systemizing are differentially related to dimensions of autistic traits in the general population / La empatía y la sistematización están relacionadas diferencialmente con las dimensiones de rasgos autistas en la población general

Background/Objective: Empathizing-Systemizing Theory suggests that low empathizing and high systemizing are linked to autistic traits in the general population. Evidence from autistic individuals is convincing, but more research in the normal population is needed. Method: We conducted two surveys (N = 3,345) investigating the relationships between empathizing, systemizing and autistic traits in the general population, using a large variety of self-report instruments and direct performance tests. Results: Strong connections between autistic symptoms, empathizing, and systemizing were found using commonly used measures (Autism Quotient, Systemizing Quotient and Empathizing Quotient). Other measures on empathizing and systemizing found the connections that E-S-theory predicts, but the correlations were a lot more modest. Weak empathizing was related to autism’s social difficulties, while systemizing was linked to non-social aspects of autism. Conclusions: The present results support the main tenets of empathizing-systemizing theory, but suggest that earlier findings might be inflated due to overlapping items in the most common assessment instruments (AU)

Antecedentes/objetivo: La Teoría de la Empatía-Sistematización (E-S) sugiere que la baja empatía y la alta sistematización se relacionan con rasgos autistas en la población general. La evidencia científica en sujetos autistas es consistente, pero es necesaria investigación en población normativa. Método: Se realizaron dos investigaciones basadas en encuesta (N = 3.345) sobre la asociación entre empatía, sistematización y rasgos subclínicos autistas en población general haciendo uso de gran variedad de mediciones auto-informadas y pruebas de rendimiento. Resultados: Se hallaron fuertes relaciones consistentes con la teoría E-S entre rasgos autistas, empatía y sistematización de uso común, medidas con índices de uso común (Coeficiente del Espectro Autista, Coeficiente de Empatía y Coeficiente de Sistematización). En otros indicadores de empatía y sistematización se encontraron relaciones en concordancia con la teoría E-S, pero las correlaciones fueron mucho más modestas. Se obtuvo una relación entre baja empatía y las dificultades sociales propias del autismo, mientras que la sistematización se relacionó con aquellos aspectos no sociales del autismo. Conclusiones: Este trabajo corrobora los principios esenciales de la Teoría de la Empatía-Sistematización, pero sugiere a su vez que resultados previos pudieran estar sesgados debido al solapamiento de ítems en los instrumentos de medición más comúnmente usados (AU)

Intuitive physics ability in systemizers relies on differential use of the internalizing system and long-term spatial representations.

According to the Empathizing-Systemizing theory (E-S Theory), individual differences in how people understand the physical world (systemizing) and the social world (empathizing), are two continuums in the general population with several implications, from vocational interests to skills in the social and physical domains. The underlying mechanisms of intuitive physics performance among individuals with strong systemizing and weak empathizing (systemizers) are, however, unknown. Our results affirm higher intuitive physics skills in healthy adult systemizers (N=36), and further reveal the brain mechanisms that are characteristic for those individuals in carrying out such tasks. When the participants performed intuitive physics tasks during functional magnetic resonance imaging, combined higher systemizing and lower empathizing was associated with stronger activations in parts of the default mode network (DMN, cuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus), middle occipital gyrus, and parahippocampal region. The posterior cingulate gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus were specifically associated with systemizing "brain type" even after controlling for task performance, while especially in the parietal cortex, the activation changes were simply explained by higher task performance. We therefore suggest that utilization of DMN-parahippocampal complex, suggested to play a role in internalizing and activating long-term spatial memory representations, is the factor that distinguishes systemizers from empathizers with the opposite "brain type" in intuitive physics tasks.

Empathizers and systemizers process social information differently.

Using the empathizing-systemizing theory as our framework, we investigated how people with high self-reported empathizing (having good social skills and being interested in people) and systemizing (being interested in physical things and processes) differ in the social information processing of emotionally negative photographs of people during "spontaneous watching" and emotional and cognitive empathy tasks. Empathizers evaluated the pictures as more emotionally touching and the reactions in the photographs more understandable than the systemizers. Compared to the empathizers, systemizers had stronger activations in the posterior cingulate cortex, an area related to cognitive empathy, as well as in the left superior temporal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus when watching emotional photographs spontaneously. During guided emotional and cognitive empathy tasks, these differences disappeared. However, during the emotional empathy task, higher systemizing was associated with weaker activation of the right inferior frontal gyrus /insula. Furthermore, during emotional and cognitive empathy tasks, empathizing was related to increased activations of the amygdala which were in turn related to higher behavioral ratings of emotional and cognitive empathy. The results suggest that empathizers and systemizers engage in social information processing differently: systemizers in more cognitive terms and empathizers with stronger automatic emotional reactions.

Intuitive and Deliberative Empathizers and Systemizers.

OBJECTIVE: Recent findings suggest there may be some overlap between individual differences in orientations for intuitive thinking and empathizing, and between deliberative thinking and systemizing. This overlap is surprising, given that intuitive and deliberative thinking derive from dual-process theories that concern domain-general types of processing, whereas theoretically, empathizing and systemizing are domain-specific orientations for understanding people and lawful physical phenomena. METHOD: The present studies (Study 1: N = 2,789, Study 2: N = 87; Finnish volunteers ages 15-69, 65% females) analyzed each of these four constructs using self-report as well as performance measures. RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analysis showed that systemizing was strongly and positively related to deliberative thinking and negatively related to intuitive thinking. Empathizing was negatively related to deliberative thinking, whereas no association between empathizing and intuition was found. However, some deliberative aspects and some intuitive aspects were involved in empathizing. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that a distinction between "intuitive empathizing" and "deliberative systemizing" is not warranted.

Skepticism: Genuine unbelief or implicit beliefs in the supernatural?

We examined whether skeptics hold implicit supernatural beliefs or implicit cognitive underpinnings of the beliefs. In study 1 (N=57), participants read a biological or a religious story about death. The story content had no effect on skeptics' (or believers') afterlife beliefs. Study 2 examined the relationships between religious and non-religious paranormal beliefs and implicit views about whether supernatural and religious phenomena are imaginary or real (n1=33, n2=31). The less supernatural beliefs were endorsed the easier it was to connect "supernatural" with "imaginary". Study 3 (N=63) investigated whether participants' supernatural beliefs and ontological confusions differ between speeded and non-speeded response conditions. Only non-analytical skeptics' ontological confusions increased in speeded conditions. The results indicate that skeptics overall do not hold implicit supernatural beliefs, but that non-analytically thinking skeptics may, under supporting conditions, be prone to biases that predispose to supernatural beliefs.

Let us be careful with the evidence on mentalizing, cognitive biases, and religious beliefs.

Norenzayan et al.'s theoretical synthesis is highly plausible and commendable. However, the empirical evidence for the arguments on mentalizing, cognitive biases, and religious belief is currently not as strong as the writers suggest. Although certainly abundant and compelling, this evidence is indirect, contradictory, and weak and must be acknowledged as such. More direct studies are needed to support the theory.

Ontological confusions but not mentalizing abilities predict religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in supernatural purpose.

The current research tested the hypothesis that the abilities for understanding other people's minds give rise to the cognitive biases that underlie supernatural beliefs. We used structural equation modeling (N=2789) to determine the roles of various mentalizing tendencies, namely self-reported affective and cognitive empathy (i.e., mind reading), actual cognitive and affective empathic abilities, hyper-empathizing, and two cognitive biases (core ontological confusions and promiscuous teleology) in giving rise to supernatural beliefs. Support for a path from mentalizing abilities through cognitive biases to supernatural beliefs was weak. The relationships of mentalizing abilities with supernatural beliefs were also weak, and these relationships were not substantially mediated by cognitive biases. Core ontological confusions emerged as the best predictor, while promiscuous teleology predicted only a small proportion of variance. The results were similar for religious beliefs, paranormal beliefs, and for belief in supernatural purpose.

Highly reflective reasoners show no signs of belief inhibition.

The processes underlying individual differences in reasoning performance are not entirely understood. What do people who do well on reasoning tasks where beliefs and logic conflict do differently from other people? Because abundant evidence shows that even poorer reasoners detect these conflicts, it has been suggested that individual differences in reasoning performance arise from inhibition failures later in the reasoning process. The present paper argues that a minority of highly skilled reasoners may deviate from this general reasoning process from an early stage. Two studies investigated signs of belief inhibition using a lexical access paradigm (Study 1) and a negative priming paradigm (Study 2). Study 1 showed that while other people exhibited signs of belief inhibition following a belief-logic conflict, people with the highest disposition for cognitive reflection did not. In Study 2, this finding was replicated and similar results were also obtained when comparing groups with higher and lower general cognitive ability. Two possible explanations are discussed. The reasoners with a highly reflective cognitive style or high general cognitive ability may have engaged and inhibited belief processing but if so, they may have been exceptionally efficient at recovering from it, wherefore no belief inhibition effects were found. An alternative account is that these reasoners started Type 2 processing directly, without first engaging in and then inhibiting belief-based processing. Under either explanation, the results indicate that individual differences in reasoning may partly arise from differences that occur early in the reasoning process.