Argument Evaluation as a Function of Reasoning Skill and Belief in an Argument

Our main purpose was to see if people\u27s beliefs predicted their effectiveness at evaluating an argument. We also sought to see if reasoning skills mediate the relationship between beliefs and argument evaluation. Students were prescreened for their beliefs. Only those with strong beliefs were tested. They completed multiple choice tests with questions on the argument topics of TV violence and spanking as punishment. Then students read sentences with an argument claim and a reason. They had to judge whether the reason supported the claim. The questions of the reasoning portion were taken from old LSAT exams. Our results showed that belief in an argument did not affect how well a person could evaluate the validity of a given argument. The results also showed that belief in the argument biased people into accepting it as true even if it was not. With reasoning ability, good reasoners were better able to judge the validity of the arguments but were no more or less biased in responding