> Asked to rate a fictitious person on a range of character traits, people who scored low on a test of cognitive ability continued to be influenced by damaging

> Asked to rate a fictitious person on a range of character traits, people who scored low on a test of cognitive ability continued to be influenced by damaging information about the person even after they were explicitly told the information was false. I think this makes more sense if you consider instincts around forming alliances, rather than raw cognitive ability. In the real world, a successful belief adoption strategy is not merely one that leads you to correct beliefs, but one that leads you to successful beliefs. In many cases, correct beliefs are the most successful. But social implications can easily override that. For example, it seems obviously incorrect to believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, since it tells of his own death. But belief in non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch was not a successful one in 16th century Europe, since it was considered heretical. In this case, hearing negative information about someone provides evidence for at least four things: 1. The negative information is true 2. Other people believe the negative information is true 3. That person's social standing is insufficient to prevent this negative information from spreading 3. Assuming the information is false, someone else has reason to spread it Only the first one of those relates to the objective truth of the information, or has much bearing on the person's character. The rest have much more to do with social consequences of allying yourself with the person in question. Of course, people don't usually evaluate all of those factors consciously and then think "Well this person is probably good, but they're also a potential pariah who I should avoid associating with". Instead, we have instincts that lead us to better social strategies by shaping our beliefs. That's obviously not the whole story, since these researchers did find that cognitive ability correlated with attitude adjustment. But I think the social side of this is a crucial piece, and may interact with cognitive ability in ways which might be difficult to control for. For example, it seems plausible that a person with intellectual social status would be more willing to adopt contrarian views, which would make it easier for them to give less weight to the social implications, and more weight to the objective question.