What is a good question? Positivity and diagnosticity drive people’s testing preferences in abstract tasks. Asymmetry does not

Previous studies on testing strategies have found that three factors drive people’s preferences: diagnosticity, positivity, and asymmetry/extremity. However, there is scant and contradictory evidence supporting the alleged preference for asymmetric questions, and some inconsistent findings about positive testing. In four studies with abstract material on question selection and question evaluation we investigated the relative contribution of asymmetric and positive strategies and the preference for either asymmetrically confirming or asymmetrically disconfirming queries. We found a lack of preference for asymmetric over symmetric queries. By contrast, there was a strong recruitment of positive testing and evidence of sensitivity to question’s diagnosticity.