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- Allwood, Carl Martin, 1952, et al.
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Does consulting with others affect answerability judgments of difficult questions?
- 2016
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In: Social Influence. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1553-4510 .- 1553-4529. ; 11:1, s. 40-53
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- People's judgments of the answerability of questions relating to how things are in the world can have important consequences for society and people's lives. Thirty-one individuals and 30 pairs made answerability judgments of 20 general knowledge questions, many with less known, or unknown, answers. Four questions had high expected consensus regarding their answerability (consensus questions) and the rest had less expected consensus with respect to their answerability (non-consensus questions). The pairs showed two polarization effects: pairs gave higher answerability ratings for questions with answerability ratings over 80% and lower ratings than individuals for questions with the lower answerability ratings. Stronger consensus-seeking tendencies and a more active memory environment in the pairs may have contributed to these results.
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- Buratti, Sandra, 1983, et al.
(author)
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Who knows? Knowledge activation, belief in certainty of knowledge, maximization tendencies and need for cognition in answerability judgments.
- 2017
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In: The Journal of general psychology. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0022-1309 .- 1940-0888. ; 144:1, s. 35-58
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this study, investigating answerability judgments, 123 participants judged whether each of 46 general knowledge questions could currently be answered by themselves, by someone else, or by no one. There were 26 consensus questions (high expected consensus about their answerability) and 20 non-consensus questions. Before each question, half of the participants rated the extent of their knowledge related to the question. Results showed that answering consensus questions compared with non-consensus led to a lower proportion of “No one knows” answers. Moreover, in the knowledge rating condition compared with the control condition, participants choose " No one knows" proportionally less. Participants’ ratings of belief in certainty of knowledge were associated with more “Someone else knows” for the non-consensus questions. Moreover, tendency to maximization led to a higher proportion of “Someone else knows” options for the non-consensus questions. Finally, high need for cognition was associated with fewer choices of “Someone else knows.”
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- Karlsson, Bodil, 1974, et al.
(author)
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Cultural Differences in Answerability Judgments
- 2018
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In: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 9
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Judgments about whether anyone can provide a relevant and correct answer to a question are called answerability judgments. Such judgements can be important in societal planning and decision making and may vary in different cultural contexts. Six hundred participants in each of China, India, and Sweden made answerability judgments of six difficult knowledge questions. For each question, they choose between three options indicating that they thought the question was answerable and a fourth option: "Nobody can answer that question." After each question, they rated their confidence that their judgment was correct. Choosing "Nobody can answer that question" was significantly more common for the Swedes and was uncommon in the Asian samples. The Asian samples showed higher confidence in their judgments. We suggest that these differences may be explained by results from cross-cultural research, but this study did not investigate specific mechanisms. Hence, more research is needed.
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- Karlsson, Bodil, 1974, et al.
(author)
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Does Anyone Know the Answer to that Question? Individual Differences in Judging Answerability
- 2016
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In: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 6
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Occasionally people may attempt to judge whether a question can be answered today, or if not, if it can be answered in the future. For example, a person may consider whether enough is known about the dangers of living close to a nuclear plant, or to a major electricity cable, for them to be willing to do so, and state-authorities may consider whether questions about the dangers of new technologies have been answered, or in a reasonable future can be, for them to be willing to invest money in research aiming develop such technologies. A total of 476 participants, for each of 22 knowledge questions, either judged whether it was answerable today (current answerability), or judged when it could be answered (future answerability). The knowledge questions varied with respect to the expected consensus concerning their answerability: consensus questions (high expected consensus), non-consensus questions (lower expected consensus), and illusion questions (formulated to appear answerable, but with crucial information absent). The questions' judged answerability level on the two scales was highly correlated. For both scales, consensus questions were rated more answerable than the non-consensus questions, with illusion questions falling in-between. The result for the illusion questions indicates that a feeling of answerability can be created even when it is unlikely that somebody can come up with an answer. The results also showed that individual difference variables influenced the answerability judgments. Higher levels of belief in certainty of knowledge, mankind's knowledge, and mankind's efficacy were related to judging the non-consensus questions as more answerable. Participants rating the illusion questions as answerable rated the other answerability questions as more, or equally, answerable compared to the other participants and showed tendencies to prefer a combination of more epistemic default processing and less intellectual processing.
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- Karlsson, Bodil, 1974, et al.
(author)
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There could be someone who knows even if I don’t. Answerability judgments of three types of questions. : There could be someone who knows even if I don’t.
- 2014
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In: Symposium conducted at the 6th biennal meeting of the EARLI special interest Group 16,Istanbul, Turkey..
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In daily life and in science we face more or less answerable questions. E.g. “Is it dangerous to use a cell-phone every day or “Does this medicine have side effects?” This study examined people’s judgments of the answerability of three types of questions and if cognitive style and epistemological beliefs affect their judgments about the extent to which questions have (correct) answers. Judgments of questions’ answerability may include considerations about if the question is answerable at all, and if so, how much work it would involve to answer it. As evidenced by various environmental catastrophes, the realism of such answerability judgments, for example in societal developmental contexts, may have important consequences. 124 participants judged 50 “knowledge” questions with respect to how answerable they were by at least one living human being, on a Likert-scale from 0 % (can not be answered) to 100% (can be answered ). The battery of questions had open-ended answers. There were three types of knowledge questions, based on Smithson´s (1993) taxonomy of ignorance: 1) Certain Consensus Questions: Questions where a consensus about the answer was expected, e.g. “What is the name of the Swedish minister of foreign affairs?” 2) Absence Questions: Questions where a consensus about the answer was expected, but crucial information to know the answer was missing: e.g. “What is the area of an ellipse with the minor axis of 2 cm?” (in order to compute the area of an ellipse you need information about both the minor and the major axis). 3) Uncertain Questions: Questions where answers may not be available due to uncertainty in terms of vagueness, probability or ambiguity. E.g. “Is there a safe way to store nuclear waste?” and “How many galaxies are there in the universe?” Individual differences were measured with respect to: Beliefs about the nature of knowledge (Epistemic Beliefs), Rosenberg’s Self-esteem, Memory and Reasoning Competence Inventory Need for Cognition and Satisficers/Maximizers. The three categories of questions differed significantly in perceived answerability. The Certain Consensus Questions were perceived to be most answerable followed by the Absence Questions. Uncertain Questions were perceived to be the least answerable. Mean answerability for the various questions had the shape of a continuum ranging from about 20% for the least answerable to almost 100% for the most answerable. People with the epistemic belief in “certain knowledge”, judged the uncertain questions as more answerable. No effect was found for other individual variables. Conclusion: Participants were able to separate questions with different ignorance qualities. Consensus of extremely high answerability was found but not the opposite. Epistemic beliefs predicted answerability ratings of uncertain questions.
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| 8. |
- Karlsson, Bodil, 1974, et al.
(author)
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What is the correct answer about the dress’ colors? Investigating the relation between optimism, previous experience, and answerability.
- 2016
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In: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 7
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Dress photograph, first displayed on the internet in 2015, revealed stunning individual differences in color perception. The aim of this study was to investigate if lay-persons believed that the question about The Dress colors was answerable. Past research has found that optimism is related to judgments of how answerable knowledge questions with controversial answers are (Karlsson et al., 2016). Furthermore, familiarity with a question can create a feeling of knowing the answer (Reder and Ritter, 1992). Building on these findings, 186 participants saw the photo of The Dress and were asked about the correct answer to the question about The Dress’ colors (“blue and black,” “white and gold,” “other, namely: : :,” or “there is no correct answer”). Choice of the alternative “there is no correct answer” was interpreted as believing the question was not answerable. This answer was chosen more often by optimists and by people who reported they had not seen The Dress before. We also found that among participants who had seen The Dress photo before, 19%, perceived The Dress as “white and gold” but believed that the correct answer was “blue and black.” This, in analogy to previous findings about non-believed memories (Scoboria and Pascal, 2016), shows that people sometimes do not believe the colors they have perceived are correct. Our results suggest that individual differences related to optimism and previous experience may contribute to if the judgment of the individual perception of a photograph is enough to serve as a decision basis for valid conclusions about colors. Further research about color judgments under ambiguous circumstances could benefit from separating individual perceptual experience from beliefs about the correct answer to the color question. Including the option “there is no correct answer” may also be beneficial.
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