Naiver Realism: A Key Refinement to the Theory of Naïve Realism

This experiment tests a key assumption within the theory of naïve realism. In Ross and Ward (1996), they state a tenet of naïve realism as follows, “the individual or group in question may have been exposed to a different sample of information than I was (in which case, provided that the other party is reasonable and open minded, the sharing or pooling of information should lead us to reach agreement).” We hypothesize that this premise is not fully accurate. Rather, people—even reasonable and open-minded ones—naively assume that the information that they are exposed to is reasonably complete and accurate; meanwhile, the information that the other party has been exposed to is presumed to be inferior in some way (e.g., less accurate or less complete). We do test this potential refinement of the theory by randomly assigning participants to one of three groups to learn about a scenario that poses the question of whether a school that faces challenges from climate change should merge with another school or remain separate. We provide participants with (a) one of half of the relevant arguments, (b) the other half of the relevant arguments, or (c) all of the relevant arguments. The three groups are then compared on outcomes of: • The decision they make • The perceived caliber of the information they received • Their competence to make a fair, objective decision