Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The social functions of explicit coherence evaluation

  • Published:
Mind & Society Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Coherence plays an important role in psychology. In this article, I suggest that coherence takes two main forms in humans’ cognitive system. The first belong to ‘system 1’. It relies on the degree of coherence between different representations to regulate them, without coherence being represented. By contrast other mechanisms, belonging to system 2, allow humans to represent the degree of coherence between different representations and to draw inferences from it. It is suggested that the mechanisms of explicit coherence evaluation have social functions. They are used as means of epistemic vigilance—to evaluate what other people tell us. They can also be turned inwards to examine the coherence of our own beliefs. Their function is then to minimize the chances that we are perceived as being incoherent. Evidence from different domains of psychology is briefly reviewed in support of these hypotheses.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Gawronski and Stack (2004) have suggested that “‘inconsistency’ between two propositions can only arise when the propositions are defined by their truth values” (p. 536). Given that it takes metarepresentations to represent the truth values of propositions, we take their view to be akin to the one exposed here (see also Stanovich 2004, on higher order preferences).

  2. Here I will use ‘coherence evaluation’ only to refer to the system 2, metarepresentational mechanisms involving representation of coherence relationships between representations.

  3. Incoherent elements can be used not only to evaluate the speaker’s statement, but also to argue for its rejection. When we have a priori reasons to distrust the speaker and we look for incoherent elements not so much to evaluate what she says but to justify the rejection of what she says, coherence evaluation has turned into reasoning. Reasoning is understood here as the search and evaluation of arguments (Mercier and Sperber 2009, 2011). It is reasoning that can evaluate, for instance, if a conclusion is logically necessary rather than merely coherent.

References

  • Albrecht JE, O’Brien EJ (1993) Updating a mental model: maintaining both local and global coherence. J Exp Psychol: Learn 19:1053–1060

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aronson E (1992) The return of the repressed: dissonance theory makes a comeback. Psychol Inq 3:303–311

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barden J, Petty R (2008) The mere perception of elaboration creates attitude certainty: exploring the thoughtfulness heuristic. J Pers Soc Psychol 95:489–509

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baumeister RF (1982) A self-presentational view of social phenomena. Psychol Bull 91:3–26

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Billig M (1996) Arguing and thinking: a rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Chaiken S, Trope Y (1999) Dual-process theories in social psychology. The Guilford Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Clément F, Koenig MA, Harris P (2004) The ontogeny of trust. Mind Lang 19:360–379

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper J (2007) Cognitive dissonance: fifty years of a classic theory. Sage, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins R, Krebs JR (1978) Animal signals: information or manipulation? In: Krebs JR, Davies NB (eds) Behavioural ecology: an evolutionary approach. Basil Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford, pp 282–309

    Google Scholar 

  • DePaulo BM, Lindsay JJ, Malone BE, Muhlenbruck L, Charlton K, Cooper H (2003) Cues to deception. Psychol Bull 129:74–118

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Edwards K, Smith EE (1996) A disconfirmation bias in the evaluation of arguments. J Pers Soc Psychol 71:5–24

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans J (2008) Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment and social cognition. Ann Rev Psychol 59:255–278

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Festinger L, Carlsmith JM (1959) Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. J Abnorm Soc Psychol 58:203–210

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Festinger L, Riecken HW, Schachter S, Aronson E (1956) When prophecy fails. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gawronski B, Strack F (2004) On the propositional nature of cognitive consistency: dissonance changes explicit, but not implicit attitudes. J Exp Soc Psychol 40:535–542

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Igou ER, Bless H (2007) On undesirable consequences of thinking: framing effects as a function of substantive processing. J Behav Decis Mak 20:125

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koriat A (2008) Subjective confidence in one’s answers: the consensuality principle. J Exp Psychol: Learn 34:945–959

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koriat A (2011) Subjective confidence in perceptual judgments: a test of the self-consistency model. J Exp Psychol Gen 140:117

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krebs JR, Dawkins R (1984) Animal signals: mind-reading and manipulation? In Krebs JR, Davies NB (eds), Behavioural ecology: an evolutionary approach Vol. 2. Basil Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford, pp 390–402

  • Kurzban R, Aktipis A (2007) Modularity and the social mind: are psychologists too self-ish? Pers Soc Psychol Rev 11:131–149

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leslie A (1987) Pretense and representation: the origins of a “theory of mind”. Psychol Rev 94:412–426

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levitan LC, Visser PS (2008) The impact of the social context on resistance to persuasion: effortful versus effortless responses to counter-attitudinal information. J Exp Soc Psychol 44:640–649

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mercier H, Sperber D (2009) Intuitive and reflective inferences. In: Evans J, Frankish K (eds) In two minds. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Mercier H, Sperber D (2011) Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behav Brain Sci 34:57–74

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Myers JL, O’Brien EJ, Albrecht JE, Mason RA (1994) Maintaining global coherence during reading. J Exp Psychol: Learn 20:876–886

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Petty RE, Cacioppo JT (1979) Issue involvement can increase or decrease persuasion by enhancing message-relevant cognitive responses. J Pers Soc Psychol 37:349–360

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D (1997) Intuitive and reflective beliefs. Mind Lang 12:67–83

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D (2000) Metarepresentations in an evolutionary perspective. In: Sperber D (ed) Metarepresentations: a multidisciplinary perspective. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 117–137

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D (2001) An evolutionary perspective on testimony and argumentation. Philos Top 29:401–413

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D (2005) Modularity and relevance: how can a massively modular mind be flexible and context-sensitive? In: Carruthers P, Laurence S, Stich S (eds) The innate mind: structure and contents. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D, Wilson D (1986) Relevance: communication and cognition. Blackwell, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D, Wilson D (2002) Pragmatics, modularity and mind-reading. Mind Lang 17:3–23

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D, Clément F, Heintz C, Mascaro O, Mercier H, Origgi G, Wilson D (2010) Epistemic vigilance. Mind Lang 25:359–393

    Google Scholar 

  • Stanovich KE (2004) The Robot’s rebellion. Chicago University Press, Chicago

  • Tedeschi JT, Schlenker BR, Bonoma TV (1971) Cognitive dissonance: private ratiocination or public spectacle. Amer Psychol 26:685–695

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thagard P (2002) Coherence in thought and action. The MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Thagard P, Verbeurgt K (1998) Coherence as constraint satisfaction. Cogn Sci 22:1–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tice DM (1992) Self-concept change and self-presentation: the looking glass self is also a magnifying glass. J Pers Soc Psychol 63:435–451

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tversky A, Kahneman D (1981) The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science 211:453–458

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tversky A, Kahneman D (1983) Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: the conjunction fallacy in probability judgment. Psychol Rev 90:293–315

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Visser PS, Mirabile RR (2004) Attitudes in the social context: the impact of social network composition on individual-level attitude strength. J Pers Soc Psychol 87:779–795

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vosniadou S, Pearson PD, Rogers T (1988) What causes children’s failures to detect inconsistencies in test? Representation versus comparison difficulties. J Educ Psychol 80:27–39

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walton DN, Krabbe EC (1995) Commitment in dialogue: basic concepts of interpersonal reasoning. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

    Google Scholar 

  • Yaniv I (2004) Receiving other people’s advice: influence and benefit. Organ Behav Hum Dec Process 93:1–13

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I thank Jean-Baptiste André, Fabrice Clément and Dan Sperber for very helpful discussions on that topic and comments on this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program, University of Pennsylvania, 313 Cohen Hall, 249 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Hugo Mercier

Authors
  1. Hugo Mercier
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hugo Mercier.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Mercier, H. The social functions of explicit coherence evaluation. Mind Soc 11, 81–92 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-011-0095-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-011-0095-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation