If you think your own logic came from someone else, you might not believe it

(credit: Walking in Sydney on Flickr)

Many people are already familiar with the concept of confirmation bias, which is the tendency for people to seek out arguments that support their existing opinions. It turns out that we’re not only addicted to seeking information that confirms our biases, we’re also willing to tolerate really weak arguments to support our opinions. So weak, in fact, that if we’re tricked into thinking our own arguments come from a stranger, we’re likely to reject them.

A recent paper in the journal Cognitive Science explored this “selective laziness of reasoning,” finding that people really are quite sloppy with their own arguments. The laziness is selective, though—when we’re assessing the arguments of other people, we’re actually inclined to be pretty tough, especially when we disagree with their conclusions.

Lies, tricks, and deceit

Previous research has found that people produce weak arguments for their own beliefs; other studies have indicated that people are quite rigorous at assessing other people's arguments. But no previous study managed to show both happening at the same time. It's important to do this because circumstances can vary widely across different studies, making it difficult to be sure that people are definitely applying different standards.

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