Adolescents' judgements about the evidential basis for complex beliefs

Participants aged between 13 and 60 years read vignettes describing conflicting interpretations of limited evidence, explained why the different interpretations arose, and judged the importance of further evidence in resolving the dispute. Our focus was on participants' views about how minds interpret information: Was their emphasis more on internal, psychological, or on external, information-based, factors in accounting for the existence of different interpretations? Participants of all ages agreed that further evidence would not be sufficient to resolve a value-laden dispute (whether youngsters should learn to drive) and explained the different views in terms of internal factors. However, younger participants discriminated less than older ones between the driving dispute and a dispute about a scientific/medical issue (the cause of a skin disease), and were less inclined to judge that views about the skin disease would be influenced by further evidence. We suggest that among people who accept the possibility of different interpretations of the same information, there are age-related differences in the importance placed on internal psychological processes in the construction of disparate views. Adolescents, compared with people who are older, seem to be particularly prone to assume that idiosyncratic interpretations will persist.