Lay Epistemics

The concept of lay epistemics concerns the process through which individuals (lay persons and scientists alike) attain their subjective knowledge. A theory of lay epistemics has been outlined in two volumes by Arie W. Kruglanski published 15 years apart, and the relevant empirical research has been presented in numerous theoretical and research articles in the scientific literature in personality and social psychology. The theory of lay epistemics describes the cognitive and motivational factors that determine the formation and alteration of human knowledge on all topics. Knowledge is defined in terms of propositions (or bodies of propositions) in which individuals have a given degree of confidence. This conception requires that the contents of knowledge be considered by the individual, implying a phase of hypothesis generation, and that they be assessed as to their validity (their warrant of confidence), implying a phase of hypothesis testing.

According to the lay epistemic theory, hypotheses are tested via relevant evidence. Relevance, in turn, is determined by preexisting inference rules that in an individual's mind tie the evidence to the conclusion in an if-then fashion. This theory assumes that all inferences or judgments are rule based, including such automatic and unconscious judgments as involved in people's perceptions of objects in their environment, the (erroneous) inferences they may draw from momentary mood states to their general levels of lifesatisfaction and so on. By assuming the inevitability of rules in the mediation of judgments, the lay epistemic theory affords a unimodel that integrates numerous dual process models proposed in different domains of social cognition.

In principle, the individual may continue generating further and further rule-like hypotheses linking the same category of evidence to different conclusions. For instance, one might link one's good mood at a given moment to one's general level of happiness and success, but also consider the alternative possibility that the good mood was caused by a drink one had just imbibed, by the fact that one's country won a soccer match, and so on. Given such a plethora of alternative possibilities, the individual may feel confused and uncertain. To attain certainty, therefore, one's generation of alternative possibilities must come to a halt. The theory of lay epistemics identifies two categories of conditions affecting the cessation (or conversely, the initiation) of hypothesis generation: long-term capability and epistemic motivation. Long-term capability relates to the availability of constructs in memory pertinent to a given issue or question, and short-term capability relates to their momentary accessibility. Epistemic motivations are conceptualized as the cognitive state the knower wants to attain. Two issues are critical here:

• 1.
  Whether the knower desires to achieve or desires to avoid the state of cognitive closure, defined as a firm judgment on a topic and contrasted with confusion and ambiguity
• 2.
  Whether such desired or undesired judgment has specific (appealing or unappealing) contents (e.g., a desirable content might be that one is healthy, and an undesirable one that one is not) or is nonspecific—its desired or undesired nature stemming from its constituting a judgment (closure) or an absence of judgment (a lack of closure)

This analysis yields a typology of four motivational orientations, referred to as needs for the

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