CONDITIONAL SENTENCES
ZERO CONDITIONAL
MAIN CLAUSE
SIMPLE PRESENT
RESULT CLAUSE
SIMPLE PRESENT
FIRST CONDITIONAL
SIMPLE PRESENT
SIMPLE FUTURE
treating conditionals as probabilistic statements has been referred to as a
defining feature of the “new paradigm” in cognitive psychology. Doing so is
attractive for several reasons, but it complicates the problem of assessing the
merits of conditional arguments. We consider several variables that relate to
judging the persuasiveness of conditional arguments with uncertain (probabilistic)
premises. We also explore ways of judging the consistency of people's beliefs as
represented by components of conditional arguments. Experimental results
provide evidence that inconsistencies in beliefs are more prevalent if the
arguments’ components are spatially and temporally dispersed than if they are
contiguous in space and time. This supports the idea that assuring the
consistency among even a small number of beliefs is difficult to do, especially if
the beliefs in question are not brought into consciousness at the same time; but
consistency can be enhanced when beliefs are considered simultaneously or
nearly so.