THE DIVERSITY PRINCIPLE IN THE TESTING OF ARGUMENTS

According to the diversity principle of scientific reasoning, hypotheses receive greater confirmation when they are supported by diverse rather than similar sets of data. This article examines whether people reason like intuitive scientists by conforming to the diversity principle in the testing of arguments. The results of two experiments demonstrate that people do indeed conform to the diversity principle by choosing a set of diverse rather than similar premises to test the conclusion of an argument. These findings are discussed in terms of the different reasoning processes involved in argument evaluation, argument testing, and rule discovery.