Causal diversity effects in information seeking

Abstract

When trying to determine the root cause of an observed effect, people may seek out information with which to test a candidate hypothesis. In two studies, we investigated how knowledge of causal structure influences this information-seeking process. Specifically, we asked whether people would choose to test for pieces of evidence that were far apart or close together in the learned causal structure of a disease category. In parallel with findings showing people's tendency to select diverse evidence in argument testing (López, 1995), our participants tested for evidence distantly located within the causal structure. Simultaneously, they rated the probability of occurrence of such diverse evidence as comparatively low. These findings suggest that rather than seeking out information most likely to confirm the hypothesis, people seek out evidence that they believe will most strongly support the hypothesis if present but that they also believe is relatively unlikely to be present (that is, might disconfirm the hypothesis).

Diversity Effect in Category-Based Inductive Reasoning of Young Children: Evidence from Two Methods

“…However, when the task is easy enough, children can choose the more useful strategy (the observed diversity eff ect). A similar pattern has been found in adults, when negative diversity eff ects were observed in adult populations ( Lόpez, et al , 1997 ;Kim & Keil, 2003 ;Kincannon & Spellman, 2003 ;Heit & Feeney, 2005 ;Kim, et al , 2008 ).…”

“…Previous studies showed that adults' reactions to the diversity of evidence in inductive reasoning are stable, except under limited conditions ( Lόpez, 1995 ;Kim & Keil, 2003 ;Kincannon & Spellman, 2003 ;Heit & Feeney, 2005 ;Kim, Yopchick, & Kwaadsteniet, 2008 ), e.g., tree experts did not show a diversity eff ect when they were reasoning about trees and their diseases ( Proffi tt, Coley, & Medin, 2000 ), but they were more likely relying on their knowledge about transmission of tree diseases rather than the knowledge of taxonomy. Prior experimental evidences of children's reactions to the diversity samples, however, have been even more mixed ( Hayes, et al , 2010 ).…”

Health Information-Seeking Behaviors Among Classically Trained Singers

“…This additional layer within the hierarchy of health information consultation may result in a reinforcement effect, providing singers with extra confirmation of the validity of the information revealed by their search. 16 Consistent with the Pew findings, female singers were more likely to search for voice-related health information than male singers (P ¼ 0.0135). However, whereas the Pew findings showed that younger people were more likely to support the credibility of the health-related information they found, their cohorts among the community of classical singers were more likely to be skeptical about information validity than older participants (P ¼ 0.0483).…”

Factors Associated with Health Information-Seeking in Low-Income Pregnant Women

“…Such information-seeking offsets any credibility or accessibility problems embedded in the various information sources (Burkell et al, 2006). Seeking health information from diverse sources also allows the pregnant woman to confirm her understanding about a health situation and/or to remove doubts (Kim & Yopchick, 2008). Health informationseeking in this study referred to convergent information-seeking.…”