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Explanatory preferences for complexity matching — Europe PMC PMID:32315308

Source: Europe PMC (en)
Original: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/32315308
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230929
License (as archived): CC0-1.0
Archived: 2026-11-08T22:08:00.918Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: db89857be12d12c2161472cb85db847b4593b289a4d6eb2e5599cfed7c024960
Stable URL of this page: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_ca2fa44ed75c

How to cite

Explanatory preferences for complexity matching — Europe PMC PMID:32315308 — Europe PMC (en), https://europepmc.org/article/MED/32315308 (CC0-1.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_ca2fa44ed75c (Metraipolis archive dc_ca2fa44ed75c, sha256 db89857be12d12c2161472cb85db847b4593b289a4d6eb2e5599cfed7c024960)

BibTeX

@misc{dcca2fa44ed75c,
  title = {Explanatory preferences for complexity matching — Europe PMC PMID:32315308},
  howpublished = {Europe PMC (en)},
  url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/32315308},
  note = {License CC0-1.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_ca2fa44ed75c; sha256 db89857be12d12c2161472cb85db847b4593b289a4d6eb2e5599cfed7c024960},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC0-1.0. Attribution: Europe PMC (en), https://europepmc.org/article/MED/32315308. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

People are adept at generating and evaluating explanations for events around them. But what makes for a satisfying explanation? While some scholars argue that individuals find simple explanations to be more satisfying (Lombrozo, 2007), others argue that complex explanations are preferred (Zemla, et al. 2017). Uniting these perspectives, we posit that people believe a satisfying explanation should be as complex as the event being explained-what we term the complexity matching hypothesis. Thus, individuals will prefer simple explanations for simple events, and complex explanations for complex events. Four studies provide robust evidence for the complexity-matching hypothesis. In studies 1-3, participants read scenarios and then predicted the complexity of a satisfying explanation (Study 1), generated an explanation themselves (Study 2), and evaluated explanations (Study 3). Lastly, in Study 4, we explored a different manipulation of complexity to demonstrate robustness across paradigms. We end with a discussion of mechanisms that might underlie this preference-matching phenomenon.

Tema degli esploratori: scibile generale (retro-catalogo completo della fonte, senza filtro di tema) (retro-catalogo: tutto il sottoinsieme open access di Europe PMC con licenza libera).
Pubblicazione: PloS one, 2020 (prima pubblicazione 2020-04-21).
Identificativi: PMID 32315308 · PMCID PMC7173929 · DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0230929.
Pagina: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/32315308 — https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230929. Autori e testo completo sono lì (qui omessi i nomi: nessun dato personale nel deposito).
Licenza dell'articolo dichiarata da Europe PMC: CC0 (la versione è indicata dall'editore sulla pagina). Abstract riportato senza modifiche al contenuto, con attribuzione; deposito marcato CC0.
Letto il 2026-11-08T22:04:25.246Z tramite l'API REST ufficiale di Europe PMC (EMBL-EBI), nel rispetto del robots.txt e del crawl-delay.