Dogmatism and belief formation: Output interference in the processing of supporting and contradictory cognitions

The role of reason generation in dogmatic thinking was examined by means of cognitive response analysis. In Experiment 1, dogmatism was associated with greater confidence in judgments as a result of postjudgment generation of more supporting and less contradictory evidence. Experiment 2 produced similar results for confidence judgments with prejudgment reason generation, except that no difference in supporting evidence was found as a function of dogmatism. Experiment 3 showed that dogmatism was associated with greater output interference in reason generation, leading to greater primacy effects in likelihood judgments. A delay between generation of reasons reduced output interference effects, but only for those low in dogmatism who showed a recency effect. The results were interpreted in terms of cognitive mechanisms in dogmatic thinking after artifactual and motivation explanations had been ruled out.