Psychology

Cognitive, Educational

PSY 101 - Introductory Psychology
PSY 325 - Educational Psychology
PSY 365 - Cognition
PSY 492 - Advanced General Capstone

I study the cognitive processes people engage in while reading information about contentious topics for which they hold strong beliefs. Several questions stem from this general interest, including: When and how beliefs change? Are people aware of belief changes when they occur? How do beliefs influence comprehension, reasoning, and argumentative writing? I investigate all of these questions with experimental methods in which participants read contentious information, report beliefs and recollect old beliefs, evaluate and generate arguments, respond to comprehension questions, and report their emotions in response to the tasks.

1. How do reading processes change when people read information that is consistent or inconsistent with beliefs they hold? What factors influence the extent to which we will change our beliefs in response to information?

2. When our beliefs do change, why do we seem to be relatively unaware of these changes? Why do we also seem to be relatively unaware of changes to other aspects of our selves, such as our health?

3. How do our beliefs influence our ability to reason about arguments or information that is consistent or inconsistent with their beliefs?

Michael's talk at TEXx Kalamazoo

Michael's talk at Psychonomics, 2021

(If you are unable to access a publication listed below, please contact Dr. Michael Wolfe at [email protected] to request a copy. Some of these papers can be downloaded for personal use. If you would like permission to use a reprint for a book or course pack, please contact the publisher.)

Wolfe, M. B., Williams, T. J., Denison, A. J., & Hart, L. W. (2024) Verification of past beliefs influences current beliefs. The Open Psychology Journal, 17, 1-13.

Wolfe, M. B., & Bowdle, B. F. (2024). Textbase and situation model representations as educational constructs. Discourse Processes, 61, 342-346. 

Hart, L., Wolfe, M., Williams, T. J. & Russell, G. (2024). Belief change after reading predicts argumentative essay content. Instructional Science, 53, 151-172, 

Wolfe, M. B. & Williams, T. J., Dewey, E., Mitchell, J., Pomp, A. & Wolfe, B. (2023). Awareness of health change is associated with weight loss following bariatric surgery. Health Psychology, 42(6):403-410. 

Wolfe, M. B. & Williams, T. J. (2018). Poor metacognitive awareness of belief change. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71, 1898-1910.

Wolfe, M. B. & Griffin, T. D. (2018). Beliefs and discourse processes. In M. F. Schober, D. N. Rapp, & M. A. Britt (Eds). Handbook of Discourse Processes, 2nd Edition. (pp. 295-314). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. 

Wolfe, M. B. & Kurby, C. A. (2017). Belief in the claim of an argument influences perceived argument soundness. Discourse Processes, 54, 599-617.

Wolfe, M. B. & Williams, T. J. (2017). Effects of text content and beliefs on informal argument evaluation. Discourse Processes, 54, 446-462.

Wolfe, M.B., Tanner, S.M., & Taylor, A. (2013). Processing and representation of arguments in on-sided texts about disputed topics. Discourse Processes, 50, 457-497. 

Wolfe, M. B. W. & Woodwyk, J. (2010). Processing and memory of information presented in narrative or expository texts. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 341-362. 

Wolfe, M. B. W. & Mienko, J. A. (2007). Learning and memory of factual content from narrative and expository text. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 541-564. 

Wolfe, M. B. W. & Goldman, S. R. (2005). Relations between adolescents' text processing and reasoning. Cognition and Instruction, 23, 467-502. 

Wolfe, M. B. W., Magliano, J. P., & Larsen, B. (2005). Causal and semantic relatedness in discourse understanding and representation. Discourse Processes, 39, 165-187. 

Wolfe, M. B. W. (2005). Memory for narrative and expository text: Independent influences of semantic associations and text organization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 359-364. 

Wolfe, M. B. W., & Goldman, S. R. (2003). Use of Latent Semantic Analysis for predicting psychological phenomena: Two issues and proposed solutions. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 35, 22-31.

Wolfe, M. B. W., Schreiner, M. E., Rehder, B., Laham, D., Kintsch, W. Landauer, T. K (1998) Learning from text: Matching readers and text by Latent Semantic Analysis. Discourse Processes, 25, 309-336.