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Hidden conflicts: Explanations make inconsistencies harder to detect
Abstract
A rational response to an inconsistent set of propositions is to revise it in a minimal way to restore consistency. A more important psychological goal is usually to create an explanation that resolves the inconsistency. We report five studies showing that once individuals have done so, they find inconsistencies harder to detect. Experiment 1 established the effect when participants explained inconsistencies, and Experiment 2 eliminated the possibility that the effect was a result of demand characteristics. Experiments 3a and 3b replicated the result, and showed that it did not occur in control groups that evaluated (or justified) which events in the pairs of assertions were more surprising. Experiment 4 replicated the previous findings, but the participants carried out all the conditions acting as their own controls. In all five studies, control conditions established that participants were able to detect comparable inconsistencies. Their explanations led them to re-interpret the generalizations as holding by default, and so they were less likely to treat the pairs of assertions as inconsistent. Explanations can accordingly undo the devastating consequences of logical inconsistencies, but at the cost of a subsequent failure to detect them.
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Explaining how inconsistent statements could be true makes human participants less likely to recognize a logical inconsistency.
“For example, explaining how inconsistent statements could be true makes human participants less likely to recognize a logical inconsistency (Khemlani & Johnson-Laird, 2012).”
From Mind Your Step (by Step): Chain-of-Thought can Reduce Performance on Tasks where Thinking Makes Humans Worse (2024) · cites this paper as Khemlani & Johnson-Laird, 2012
When human participants are shown a pair of logically inconsistent statements and asked to explain their coexistence, they become worse at judging whether the statements are indeed logically inconsistent.
“When human participants are shown a pair of logically inconsistent statements and asked to explain their coexistence, they become worse at judging whether the statements are indeed logically inconsistent (Khemlani & Johnson-Laird, 2012).”
From Mind Your Step (by Step): Chain-of-Thought can Reduce Performance on Tasks where Thinking Makes Humans Worse (2024) · cites this paper as Khemlani & Johnson-Laird, 2012
Performance was significantly worse when humans first explained why an inconsistent pair could coexist before providing the inconsistency judgement.
“Performance was significantly worse in the former.”
From Mind Your Step (by Step): Chain-of-Thought can Reduce Performance on Tasks where Thinking Makes Humans Worse (2024) · cites this paper as Khemlani & Johnson-Laird, 2012
An important difference between models and humans in this setting is priors over logic: participants in Khemlani & Johnson-Laird (2012) were recruited intentionally without logical expertise, but LLMs have access to numerous logical puzzles and knowledge in their training corpuses, creating a synergistic effect with the extra tokens CoT provides.
“An important difference between models and humans in this setting is priors over logic: participants in Khemlani & Johnson-Laird (2012) were recruited intentionally without logical expertise, but LLMs have access to numerous logical puzzles and knowledge in their training corpuses, creating a synergistic effect with the extra tokens CoT provides.”
From Mind Your Step (by Step): Chain-of-Thought can Reduce Performance on Tasks where Thinking Makes Humans Worse (2024) · cites this paper as Khemlani & Johnson-Laird, 2012
Khemlani & Johnson-Laird (2012) found that if you ask humans to deliberate specifically as to why A ∧ ¬B was plausible, they would subsequently be less accurate at identifying logical inconsistencies between statements.
“Khemlani & Johnson-Laird (2012) found that if you ask humans to deliberate specifically as to why A ∧ ¬B was plausible, they would subsequently be less accurate at identifying logical inconsistencies between the statements.”
From Mind Your Step (by Step): Chain-of-Thought can Reduce Performance on Tasks where Thinking Makes Humans Worse (2024) · cites this paper as Khemlani & Johnson-Laird (2012)
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Cited by
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Liu, R., Geng, J., Wu, A. J., Sucholutsky, I., Lombrozo, T., & Griffiths, T. L. (2024) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2410.21333 · Cited by 6
“For example, explaining how inconsistent statements could be true makes human participants less likely to recognize a logical inconsistency (Khemlani & Johnson-Laird, 2012).”
Influential
Metadata
- Authors
- Khemlani, S. S., & Johnson-Laird, P. N.
- Affiliations
- United States Naval Research Laboratory (US)
- Princeton University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Khemlani, Sangeet S.
- Venue
- Acta Psychologica
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2012-03
- Volume
- 139
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 486-491
- ISSN
- 0001-6918 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2038000544
- Cited by
- 36
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 4.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Acta Psychologica (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (SES 0844851)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Keywords
- inconsistency detection, explanation, cognitive dissonance, belief revision, default reasoning, generalization, logical inconsistency
- MeSH terms
- Conflict, Psychological, Humans, Logic
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