Initial belief state as a predictor of belief revision

In this study, we refined Elio and Pelletier's (1997) belief revision exper iments. Contrary to their findings, our results failed to show that conditi onal sentences are more readily abandoned than ground sentences in recreati ng a consistent belief state; participants preferred expressing their doubt about the conditional over disbelieving it. Refinements in the design led to the conclusion that the greater their initial certitude about the condit ional, the less participants are prepared to reject the conditional rule an d the greater they tend to retain their retrospective belief in the rule.