#658: How Laypeople Resolve Expert Disagreement: The Role of Epistemic Aims and Ideals

Expert disagreement frequently arises in everyday decision-making, yet little is known about how people’s epistemic thinking shapes their disagreement evaluation and resolution. This study applied the AIR framework of epistemic thinking to examine how laypeople’s personal and epistemic aims and ideals shape their disagreement resolution strategies. Four triads of undergraduate students assessed conflicting dietary recommendations using a web-based collaborative learning environment, synthesizing the multiple documents into their shared visual graphic organizer to analyze the disagreements. The result showed that students evoked epistemic ideals across three main categories: ideals for authors, for study design, and for documents. The verbal protocol analysis of the students’ conversation revealed that the groups followed different paths to deal with the disagreements; depending on their different aims and ideals, each triad came to different conclusions. Our analyses reveal that laypeople’s epistemic and personal aims and criteria shape their strategies in resolving disagreement among conflicting documents.