belief-bias is the tendency to evaluate arguments by the believability of their conclusions rather than by their logical validity. When an argument has a plausible conclusion, people accept its reasoning as strong; when the conclusion is implausible, the same reasoning is judged weak. The parameters of the effect are: (1) separation of conclusion believability from argument validity, (2) the conflict condition where valid arguments have implausible conclusions and invalid arguments have plausible conclusions, and (3) the measure of bias as the accuracy gap between believable and unbelievable valid arguments. It persists through metacognitive training (the explicit practice of separating conclusion truth from argument structure), logical literacy education, and the habitual application of formal analysis to evaluative judgment. [formal: bias credulitatis | substrate: mind | horizon: a life | explicit: no | epoch: 0.48]
Accepted ontology entry
belief-bias
belief-bias is the tendency to evaluate arguments by the believability of their conclusions rather than by their logical validity. When an argument has a plausible conclusion, people accept its reasoning as strong; when the conclusion is i…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A belief-bias is a human-made concept from cognitive psychology naming the tendency to judge the strength of arguments by the plausibility of their conclusions rather than by logical validity. It is a documented, measured phenomenon in experimental psychology — a construct of the scientific map, not the raw behavior itself.
Names and aliases
- belief-biasen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrmwufxy01pxd1nllvxs1o1sINSTANCE_OF →
Belief bias is a specific type of cognitive bias: the tendency to judge an argument's validity based on the plausibility of its conclusion rather than its logical form. Direction tested: specific (belief-bias) → general (cognitive-bias). This is the correct INSTANCE_OF direction per Law 9.
- cmreni1le00twg8vusqrsdf83DEPENDS_ON →
Belief bias is the tendency to accept belief-congruent conclusions regardless of logical validity. It requires belief as its substrate — remove belief and belief bias has nothing to bias toward or against.
- cmrf51qwi005rcqqtmpyziy84DEPENDS_ON →
Remove memory: no stored beliefs exist to filter incoming information by consistency, so the bias cannot operate. Present-tense operational dependency.
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 17, 2026, 3:29 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 9103a9b31d8944c254f2e984c47e26675e845358905e682b0bf09982b72132d0