Brad and Lisa's Presentations:

• Brad’s Presentation: Right or Wrong? The brain’s fast response to morally objectionable statements.
• (not a lot of studies have been done with moral issues)
• Two groups of dutch respondents with opposing value systems took a realistic attitude survey while EEG was recorded. Christian or not Christian parties
• Ex. I think euthanasia is an ACCEPTABLE vs. UNACCEPTABLE choice.
• They gave these word by word.
• Cognitive Survey research assumption: people read an entire statement then decide how they feel about it.
• Psycholinguistics: evidence indicates initial valuation happens rapidly as the statement unfolds.
• They think that affect effects the meaning of words… so we base it off of our emotional intuition.
• Haidt and Greene – moral decision making – intuitions and emotions.
• Ex. Why can’t you eat your dead dog?
• In this study, they were looking for three ERP components:
• Late Positivity Potential (LLP) Amplitude caries with ratings of emotional arousal.
• Negativity Bias (LPP) Negative stimuli generate stronger responses than positive
• N400 – larger amplitude = more difficult processing.
• Hypothesis: value inconsistent statements in both groups should elicit the same ERP effects for the opposite variants of the critical statements Elevated N400 as a result of value-inconsistent words being unexpected, emotionally salient, and attention grabbing. 
• Results: 
• Control condition did seem to work. The differences were the same between the Christians and non Christians , so they were disagreeing in the same brain areas, basically.
• N400 effect may come from expecting a different word, or it may index difficulites… like a mental pause. If it doesn’t mean what you think it should mean ahead of time, it takes extra time or resources to process it.
• Lpp effect: explained by negativity bias. Strongly disagreeable statements warrant extra attention. Lpp effect may have gotten interrupted by the N400?
• Conclusion: This task involved explicit evaluation : language was used in a natural way to communicate relevant ideas. The neural signature revealed here may or may not reflect the unlocking of deep moral values, its more superficial level. Findings were obtained with men only (SGP only allowed men to participate at the time).
• These findings testify to the presence of very rapid reciprocal links between neural systems for language and for valuation. 
• Relevant for the question, can prejudice be changed?

Lisa’s Presentation: How we know

• Explanation v. evidence
• Explanation seems to be more influential than evidence.
• People tend to offer explanations rather than covariation evidence when asked to justify theories.
• We depend on explanations that make our arguments make sense to us and feel we are “right”… We feel that we know when we think we know how it works (explanations). We are more interested in how it works than how if works… even though that’s backwards!
• Context is important
• Choosing explanations over evidence seems to depend on the context and the strength of the evidence
• This preference decreases developmentally
• This disappears with education.
• Dangers of Relying on Explanation
• Limits ability to analyze alternatives
• Leads to overconfidence
• Might be false
• Juries
• They have to make and justify a claim that is “correct”
• Jurors tend to rely on an explanation of “what happened” and come to a decision that is consistent with that explanation.
• Individual variation
• Satisficing: Hearing a narrative that is plausible, so you go with that.
• Theory-evidence coordination.: looking at all the alternatives and making a decision on what is the most consistent with evidence.

• The Social Dimension of Justification
• Many vs. one: can 6-12 people make a better decision than just one?
• Does deliberation with other jurors enhance the quality of the decision?
• Had individuals make a decision before they met, and had some make a decision after. Afterwards, they demonstrated a higher level of reasoning, and use evidence that they discussed in the group. They made the same decision, but used different reasons. McCoy, Nunez, Dammeyer
• Flanton: asked jurors before and after. 38% changed their decision following the  discussion, but they didn’t reason any better than they had before.
• Weinstock found that individual differences are stable across all different kinds of trials. Decisions cannot be changed by content differences of short term social interactions. 
• Age and Knowledge
• Hypothesis: below a certain age, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between evidence and explanation as a basis for knowledge claims.
• 4-6 yr olds were shown pictures, and they mixed evidence and explanation, they were the same for them.
• 4 yr olds gave more explanation-based responses.
• 6 yr olds still made a mistake of mixing the two, but were able to distinguish between evidence and explanation.
• As we get older, do we show an appreciation for the use of evidence?
• 8th graders, college students, and graduate students.
• Very few of the participants understood how to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each arguments (ex. Why do people smoke?)
• Nonepistemic: how right an argument is. 
• Epistemic: the form of the claim… sticking with this was hard.
• People immediately look at the specifics of the content.
• Absolutists, Multiplists, Evaluatisvist
• Absolutist
• Facts are objective, certain and come from and external reality
• Changes during adolescence and is replaces by multiplists
• Multiplist
• Aware of uncertain and understand how subjective knowing is
• (ex. Saying, well its just a matter of opinion… not necessarily one argument is better than the other).
• Evaluativist
• Knowing is objective
• 2 people can each have a legitimate argument
• Justification of claims becomes important
• Epistemological beliefs
• Can these beliefs explain indivdual differences in cognitive performance?
• Developmental data says yes
• Juror reasoning
• Hypothesis: Epistemological beliefs influence intellectual values which then influence if we engage in intellectual activities. These influence our intellectual performance.
• Ex, how important we think the act of learning is.
• Our understanding influences our values, which makes us choose whether or not to seek information.
• Real world reasoning
• Interpretation of any 2 cognitive variables is limited when two variables are similar
• Weinstock questioned jurors about a fictitious war
• One historian’s account had to be true
• People who believed this were more likely to believe that they had the only one right answer
• Each account was an informed interpretation 
• People who went with this one evaluated based on which had the best evidence.
• Epistemological understanding influences people’s justification of claims.
• Conclusion
• Differening conception of what it means to know something influences how people know. (can accept the facts if there are no alternatives, or accept valid claims to truth if there is a valid explanation, or we regard the claims as representations of the truth).
• Its important for people to know the strengths and weaknesses of an argument
• Individual differences such as a personality and cognition should be looks at to understand the role of disposition.
• Values and dispositions are acquired in social settings.