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Beliefs About Abilities and Epistemic Beliefs: Aspects of Cognitive Flexibility in Information-Rich Environments

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Links Between Beliefs and Cognitive Flexibility

Abstract

When people stumble across inconsistent or conflicting scientific information, for example, on the Internet, they have to find an adequate explanation for the inconsistency or conflict. We focus on two types of explanations people could consider: the lack of one’s ability to understand the information or to explain away the inconsistency, and the actually given inconsistency that is inherent to the topic, as the knowledge in itself is developing or uncertain. We assert that in the above-described scenario, cognitive flexibility manifests in finding a suitable and adapted explanation for the experienced inconsistencies and that such flexibility depends on people’s beliefs about abilities and on their epistemic beliefs: To be able to distinguish between these two possible explanations, people have to have a realistic view of their own competencies, that is, adequate beliefs about their abilities (statement 1), and they have to hold a realistic view of the boundaries of scientific knowledge, that is, adequate epistemic beliefs (statement 2). In this chapter, several studies are summarized that underline both the role of beliefs about one’s abilities and epistemic beliefs in processing scientific information. Several empirical studies we conducted are introduced, which investigated both kinds of beliefs with respect to processing conflicting versus consistent information. These exemplar studies show that searching for scientific information on the Internet is a suitable test bed to empirically investigate the ways if and how people refer to ability and epistemic explanations for (conflicting) knowledge claims (statement 3). As a result of the studies, we propose that an empirical investigation of the interplay between beliefs about abilities and epistemic beliefs can contribute to the ongoing debate on the conceptualization of epistemic beliefs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    However, it is important to note that attribution theory as it is part of research on social cognition (e.g., Heider, 1958) focuses on explaining the causes of behavior of oneself and of others (self-perception, social perception, cf. Kelley, 1973). Such aspects of attribution theory will not be part of our further deliberations.

  2. 2.

    Due to the ongoing discussion on the unfortunate and overbearing connotations of the commonly used labels “naive” versus “sophisticated” for the differing complexity of epistemic beliefs (especially in educational psychology research), we use the terms “less advanced” and “more advanced” to point to the continuum on which epistemic beliefs are assumed to develop.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Psychology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

    Dorothe Kienhues & Rainer Bromme

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  1. Dorothe Kienhues
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  2. Rainer Bromme
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Correspondence to Dorothe Kienhues .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Centr. Instructiepsychol.&-technologie, K.U. Leuven, Andreas Vesaliusstraat 2, Leuven, 3000, Belgium

    Jan Elen

  2. Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg, Kunzenweg 21, Freiburg, 79117, Germany

    Elmar Stahl

  3. Inst. Psychologie III, Methodenlehre, Entwicklungspsychologie,, Universität Münster, Fliednerstr. 21, Münster, 48149, Germany

    Rainer Bromme

  4. , Subfaculteit Psychologie en Pedagogische, K.U. Leuven, Etienne Sabbelaan 53, Kortrijk, 8500, Belgium

    Geraldine Clarebout

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Kienhues, D., Bromme, R. (2011). Beliefs About Abilities and Epistemic Beliefs: Aspects of Cognitive Flexibility in Information-Rich Environments. In: Elen, J., Stahl, E., Bromme, R., Clarebout, G. (eds) Links Between Beliefs and Cognitive Flexibility. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1793-0_6

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