Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The phenomenon of belief polarisation—in which people update their beliefs in opposing directions, particularly after observing the same evidence—has garnered growing attention and concern in recent years from across the fields of philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology, particularly as misinformation and ideological polarisation have threatened the fabric of political and social consensus (Allcott et al., 2019; Haghtalab et al., 2020; Lelkes, 2016; Wilson et al., 2020). Despite the recognition of belief polarisation as an emerging social phenomenon (or perhaps thanks to its very existence) both by scientific researchers and major social institutions such as governments and business, there has been relatively little work aiming to explicitly unify various strands of theorising regarding the causes of belief polarisation and strategies for addressing its consequences.