This test measures people’s cognitive style and ability by identifying individual differences in reflexivity and critical reasoning skills. 

Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT)

Overall, half the participants accepted the false feedback responses as their own. The participants’ future attitudes were strongly influenced by the false feedback, even after one week. Attitude change was more significant amongst participants in the confabulation condition, asked to provide verbal arguments, versus the acknowledge condition. Political involvement and beliefs had no effect on one’s ability for attitude change or response correction. Participants with higher CRT scores were more likely to recognize the manipulation and correct it. There was no significance between magnitude of attitude change and length of confabulatory response.

False Beliefs and Confabulation’s Lasting Effects on Political Attitudes: Experiment 1 & 2 Results

The study had the same set up as Experiment 1, however, additional measures were added such as measures of confabulatory reasoning, political attitudes, and a Cognitive Reflection Test.

Syracuse University

Researchers of the study “False Beliefs and Confabulation Can Lead to Lasting Changes in Political Attitudes” (2018) used the CBP in their experiments to examine the lasting effects of false beliefs and confabulation on political attitudes. The study investigates whether or not false feedback about one’s own survey responses has the power to change political attitudes with lasting effects. This study is an excellent example of how political beliefs can be stable and maintained in everyday context, yet still have the capability to be flexible in the argumentative process of engaging with political statements. 

False Beliefs and Confabulation’s Lasting Effects on Political Attitudes

Strandberg, T., Sivén, D., Hall, L., Johansson, P., & Pärnamets, P. (2018). False beliefs and confabulation can lead to lasting changes in political attitudes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(9), 1382–1399. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000489 


False Beliefs and Confabulation Can Lead to Lasting Changes in Political Attitudes

Participants took a survey rating their opinions on political statements and the certainty of their responses. A portion of the survey was shown back to the participants with half of the responses secretly manipulated. Participants were either placed under the acknowledge condition (participants simply have to acknowledge the manipulated response on screen) or the confabulation condition (participants had to acknowledge the manipulated survey result and provide argumentative reasoning to the survey response). Participants then had to fill out another questionnaire including all political statements from the previous one along with 6 new statements and then took the questionnaire again one week later. The researchers hypothesized that the amount of confabulation a participant engages in when justifying a manipulated survey response will increase the self-induced attitude change, as well as persistence over time.

Learn Before

Related

Learn After