Abstract
Does belief selection depend on the content of beliefs only and irrelevant to the sources of beliefs? The aim of the present study is to explore the effects of social categories on belief selection.Three social categories were choosed in this study: 'physics teacher', 'Chinese teacher' and 'geography teacher', which correspond to 'scientist', 'literati' and 'social scientist', respectively. The 'Belief Selection Test' was developed,there are three statements for each item in the test. The testees were asked to judge which statement is the most reasonable and which is the most unreasonable. There are four versions of the test: version 0 is the traditional one, and the choosed three social categories were embeded into version 1 to version 3 systematically.
We have 612 senior high school students as subjects, and the four version of tests were distributed randomly.
Several results were found: 1. Social categories do influence belief selection, where 'physics teacher' enhances positive and reduces negative belief selection, the other two categories have opposite effect. 2. The effect of social category on positive belief selection is slightly stronger than on negative belief selection. 3. For 'science' and 'science and culture' related belief selection, the influences of social categories are different.
| Keywords: | Belief Selection; Social Category |
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