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Record W4406669758 · doi:10.1037/xge0001703

The preference for attitude neutrality.

2025· article· en· W4406669758 on OpenAlexaff
Thomas I. Vaughan‐Johnston, Devin I. Fowlie, Laura Wallace, Mark W. Susmann, Leandre R. Fabrigar

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Experimental Psychology General · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicSocial and Intergroup Psychology
Canadian institutionsQueen's University
FundersCardiff University
KeywordsPsychologyPreferenceNeutralitySocial psychologyCognitive psychologyStatisticsEpistemology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

= 1,873). The preference for neutrality is distinguished from low preference for extremity, as well as from an interest in collecting balanced information. We also show that the preference for neutrality is related to a sometimes uncritical and biased pursuit of attitudinal neutrality, paralleling effects found in the attitude extremity literature. The preference for neutrality is related to dispositional attitudinal neutrality and ambivalence, political centrism, a preference for other people with neutral versus extreme views, and biased responding to messages arbitrarily framed as "moderate" versus extreme. Implications for politically polarized attitudes, persuasion, and intellectual humility are discussed. The preference for neutrality may pose a substantial challenge for creating a shared understanding of the world and addressing pressing social issues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.012
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.096
Threshold uncertainty score0.322

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.012
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.000
Scholarly communication0.0020.001
Open science0.0000.001
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0960.017

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.090
GPT teacher head0.482
Teacher spread0.392 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations3
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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