The confirmation bias , also called confirmation bias or skewed bias , is a tendency to search, interpret, support and recall information in a way that confirms or a pre-existing hypothesis. This is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they collect or memorize information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged problems and strongly planted beliefs. The confirmation bias is a variation of the more common apophenia tendency.
People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Search bias, interpretation and memory have been called to explain the polarization of attitudes (when disputes become more extreme even though different parties are exposed to the same evidence), perseverance persistence (when beliefs persist after evidence for them is proven wrong), the effect of irrational primacy greater on information found at the beginning of the series) and illusion correlations (when people misunderstand the relationship between two events or situations).
A series of psychological experiments in the 1960s showed that people were biased against their existing beliefs. Then work reinterpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in one-sided ways, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias the conclusions of people. Explanations for the observed bias include delusions and limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show a confirmation bias because they weigh the cost of error, rather than investigate in a neutral and scientific way. However, even scientists can be vulnerable to confirmation bias.
Confirmation of confirmation contributes to excessive belief in personal belief and can maintain or strengthen confidence in the face of conflicting evidence. Bad decisions because this bias has been found in the political and organizational context.
Video Confirmation bias
Jenis
Confirmation confirmation is effect in information processing. They are different from what is sometimes called the behavioral confirmation effect , commonly known as self-filled prophecy , where one's expectations affect their own behavior, bringing the expected result.
Some psychologists limit the term bias confirmation to collect evidence selectively in favor of what is already believed while ignoring or rejecting evidence supporting a different conclusion. Others apply this term more broadly to the tendency to maintain existing convictions when seeking evidence, interpreting it, or remembering it from memory.
Bias search for information
Experiments have found over and over again that people tend to test hypotheses in a unilateral way, looking for evidence that is consistent with their current hypothesis. Rather than looking through all the relevant evidence, they answer the question to receive an affirmative answer that supports their theory. They look for the consequences they expect if their hypothesis is true, rather than what would happen if they were wrong. For example, someone who uses yes/no questions to find the number he suspects as number 3 might ask, "Is that an odd number?" People prefer this type of question, called a "positive test", even when negative tests like "Is that an even number?" will produce exactly the same information. However, this does not mean that people are looking for tests that guarantee a positive answer. In studies where subjects can choose either a pseudo test or a truly diagnostic one, they like the correct diagnosis.
Preferences for positive tests themselves are not biased, because positive tests can be very informative. However, in combination with other effects, this strategy can confirm existing beliefs or assumptions, regardless of whether they are true. In real-world situations, evidence is often complicated and mixed. For example, contradictory ideas about a person can be supported by concentrating on one aspect of his behavior. Thus, the search for evidence supporting the hypothesis will work. One illustration of this is how the phrasing question can significantly change the answer. For example, the person asked, "Are you happy with your social life?" report greater satisfaction than asked, "Are you not happy with your social life?"
Even small changes in question words can affect how people search through available information, and hence their conclusions. This is demonstrated by using a fictitious childcare case. Participants read that Parents A is suitable enough to be a guard in various ways. Parent B has a prominent mix of positive and negative qualities: a close relationship with a child but a job that will take him away for a long time. When asked, "Which parent should have child custody?" the majority of participants choose Old B, especially looking for positive attributes. However, when asked, "What parents should be denied custody of the child?" they look for negative attributes and the majority reply that Parents B should be denied custody, implying that Parents A should have custody.
Similar research has shown how people engage in biased information search, but also that this phenomenon may be limited by preference for the original diagnostic test. In the initial trial, the participants judged others on the personality dimension of introversion-extroversion on the basis of the interview. They choose interview questions from the list provided. When the interviewee is introduced as an introvert, the participants choose the question considered intriguing, such as, "What do you find unpleasant about the noisy party?" When the interviewee is described as an extrovert, almost all his questions are considered extroversies, such as, "What would you do to live a boring party?" These burdened questions give the resource persons little or no chance to falsify hypotheses about them. Newer trial versions give participants fewer alleged questions to choose from, such as, "Are you circumventing social interaction?" Participants prefer to ask these more diagnostic questions, showing only weak bias against positive tests. This pattern, the main preference for diagnostic tests and weaker preference for positive tests, has been replicated in other studies.
Personality traits influence and interact with biased search processes. Individuals vary in their ability to defend their attitude from external attacks in relation to selective exposure. Selective exposure occurs when individuals seek information that is consistent, rather than inconsistent, with their personal beliefs. Experiments test the extent to which individuals can dispute arguments that are contrary to their personal beliefs. High-confidence people are better prepared to seek information that goes against their personal position to form an argument. Individuals with low levels of trust do not seek contradictory information and prefer information that supports their personal position. People generate and evaluate evidence in arguments that are biased against their own beliefs and opinions. A high level of confidence reduces the preference for information that supports individual personal beliefs.
Other experiments provide participants with complex regulatory tasks involving mobile objects simulated by the computer. The objects on the computer screen follow specific laws, which must be known to the participants. Thus, participants can "fire" objects on the screen to test their hypotheses. Despite a lot of effort during the ten-hour session, none of the participants found system rules. They usually try to confirm rather than falsify their hypothesis, and are reluctant to consider alternatives. Even after looking at objective evidence that refutes their working hypothesis, they often continue to do the same tests. Some participants were taught proper hypothesis testing, but this instruction had little effect.
Interpretation of bias
Confirmation confirmation is not limited to evidence collection. Even if two individuals have the same information, the way they interpret it can be biased.
A team at Stanford University conducted an experiment involving participants who felt strongly about the death penalty, half disagreeing and half against it. Each participant reads a description of two studies: comparison of US states with and without death penalty, and comparison of murder rates in the states before and after the introduction of capital punishment. After reading a brief description of each study, the participants were asked whether their opinions had changed. Then, they read more detailed reports of each of the study procedures and should assess whether the research is done well and convincingly. In fact, his research is fiction. Half the participants were told that one type of study supported the deterrent effect and the other damaged it, while for the other participants, the conclusions were exchanged.
Participants, whether supporters or opponents, reported that their attitudes shifted slightly toward the first study they read. As soon as they read the more detailed description of the two studies, they almost return to their original beliefs regardless of the evidence provided, pointing to the details that support their point of view and ignore anything contradictory. Participants describe the various studies that support their pre-existing outlook as superior to contradictory, detailed and specific views. Writing about a study that seems to weaken the deterrence effect, a death penalty supporter writes, "This study does not cover a long period of time," while the opponent's comment on the same study says, "No strong evidence contrary to the researcher has been presented." The results illustrate that people set higher standards of evidence for hypotheses that are contrary to their current expectations. This effect, known as "disconfirmation bias", has been supported by other experiments.
Another study of biased interpretation occurred during the 2004 US presidential election and involved participants who reported having strong feelings about the candidates. They show contradictory pair pairs, either from Republican candidate George W. Bush, Democratic candidate John Kerry or a politically neutral public figure. They are also given further statements that make the contradiction seem plausible. From these three pieces of information, they must decide whether each individual's statement is inconsistent or not. There is a strong difference in this evaluation, with participants much more likely to interpret the statements of candidates they oppose as contradictory.
In this experiment, the participants made their judgment while in magnetic resonance scanning (MRI) that monitored their brain activity. When participants evaluate contradictory statements by their favorite candidates, the emotional centers of their brains are aroused. This is not the case with statements by other figures. The researchers concluded that different responses to statements were not due to passive reasoning errors. Instead, the participants actively reduce the cognitive dissonance caused by reading about the irrational or hypocritical behavior of their favorite candidates.
The bias in the interpretation of beliefs is persistent, regardless of the level of intelligence. Participants in the experiment took a SAT test (college admission test used in the United States) to assess their intelligence level. They then read information about safety issues for the vehicle, and the researchers manipulate the national origin of the car. American participants gave their opinion if the car should be banned on a six point scale, where one shows "definitely yes" and six shows "definitely no". Participants first evaluate whether they will allow dangerous German cars on American roads and dangerous American cars on German roads. Participants believe that dangerous German cars on American roads should be banned faster than dangerous American cars on German roads. No difference between the level of intelligence at the level of participants will ban the car.
Interpretation of bias is not limited to a topic that is emotionally significant. In another experiment, participants were told stories about theft. They should assess the importance of statements that argue well for or against certain responsible characters. As they hypothesize the character's faults, they judge the statements that support the hypothesis as more important than conflicting statements.
Memory bias
People may remember evidence selectively to reinforce their expectations, even if they collect and interpret evidence neutrally. This effect is called "selective recall", "memory confirmation", or "access-memory bias". Psychological theories differ in their predictions about selective memory. Scheme theory predicts that information in accordance with previous expectations will be easier to keep and remember than unsuitable information. Some alternative approaches say that surprising information stands out and is very easy to remember. The predictions of both these theories have been confirmed in different experimental contexts, without direct winning theories.
In one study, participants read the profile of a woman describing a mixture of introverted and extroverted behaviors. They then have to remember examples of introversion and extroversion. One group was told this was to assess the woman for a job as a librarian, while the second group was told it was for a job in the sale of real estate. There is a significant difference between what the two groups are remembering, with the "librarian" group considering more examples of introversion and "sales" groups that remember more extroverted behaviors. Selective memory effects have also been shown in experiments that manipulate the desired personality types. In one of these, a group of participants is shown evidence that extroverts are more successful than introverts. Other groups were told otherwise. In a further seemingly unrelated study, participants were asked to recall events from their lives where they had been introverted or extroverted. Each group of participants gave more memories that linked themselves to the more desirable personality types, and recalled the memories more quickly.
Emotional state changes can also affect memory memory. Participants assess how they felt when they first learned that O.J. Simpson has been acquitted of murder. They describe their emotional reactions and beliefs about the decision of a week, two months, and a year after the trial. The results show that participants' judgments for the Simpson error change over time. The more participants' opinions about decisions have changed, the less stable the participants remember about their initial emotional reactions. When participants remember their initial emotional reactions two months and a year later, the assessment of the past is very similar to the current emotional assessment. People show considerable bias when discussing their opinions on controversial topics. Memory memories and experience constructs are revised in terms of appropriate emotional states.
Mystery bias has been shown to affect memory memory accuracy. In an experiment, widows and widowers assessed the intensity of their grief experienced six months and five years after the death of their partner. Participants recorded a higher experience of grief at six months than five years. However, when the participants were asked after five years how they felt six months after the death of another significant person, the intensity of the grief participants was reminded highly correlated with their current level of sadness. Individuals seem to take advantage of their current emotional state to analyze how they feel when they experience past events. Emotional memories are reconstructed by the current emotional state.
One study shows how selective memory can maintain confidence in extra-elderly perceptions (ESP). Believers and unbelievers are each shown a description of the ESP experiment. Half of each group was told that the experimental results supported the existence of ESP, while others were told they were not. In subsequent tests, participants recall the material accurately, regardless of the believer who has read the non-supporter evidence. The group recalled less significant information and some of it misjudged results as ESP supporters.
Maps Confirmation bias
Related effects
Polarization of opinion
When people with opposing views interpret new information in a biased way, their view can move further. This is called "attitude polarization". The effect is shown by an experiment involving drawing a series of red and black balls from one of two hidden "bingo baskets". Participants know that one basket contains 60% black balls and 40% red balls; others, 40% black and 60% red. The researchers looked at what happens when the alternating colored balls are drawn in turns, in an unprofitable sequence of baskets. After each ball is drawn, participants in one group are asked to state their judgment about the possibility that the balls were taken from one or another basket. These participants tend to grow more confident with each successive withdrawal - whether they initially think the basket with a 60% black ball or that with a 60% red ball is a more likely source, their estimate of probability increases. The other group of participants were asked to state the probability estimate only at the end of the drawn ball sequence, rather than after each ball. They do not exhibit polarization effects, suggesting that it does not always happen when people only hold opposite positions, but when they openly commit to them.
A less abstract study is a biased interpretation of Stanford's interpretation in which participants with strong opinions about the death penalty read about mixed experimental evidence. Twenty-three percent of participants reported that their views became more extreme, and this self-reported shift was strongly correlated with their initial attitudes. In subsequent trials, participants also reported their opinions to be more extreme in response to ambiguous information. However, their comparison of attitudes before and after the new evidence shows no significant change, suggesting that self-reported changes may not be real. Based on this experiment, Deanna Kuhn and Joseph Lao concluded that polarization is a real phenomenon but is far from inevitable, occurring only in a small minority of cases. They found that it was requested not only by considering mixed evidence, but only by thinking of the topic.
Charles Taber and Milton Lodge argue that the results of the Stanford team are difficult to imitate because the arguments used in later experiments are too abstract or confusing to generate an emotional response. Taber and Lodge studies use emotionally controlled topics from gun control and affirmative action. They measure their participants' attitudes toward these issues before and after reading the arguments on each side of the debate. Two groups of participants showed polarization of attitudes: those with strong prior opinions and those with political knowledge. In this section of the study, participants chose which source of information to read, from a list prepared by the researchers. For example, they can read the National Rifle Association and Brady Anti-Handgun Coalition arguments about gun control. Even when instructed to be fair, participants are more likely to read arguments in favor of their existing attitudes than those that are not. This biased information search correlates well with polarization effects.
The backfire effect is the name for the finding, with evidence given to their beliefs, one can deny evidence and believe stronger. This phrase was first coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler in 2010.
Confidentiality of discredited belief
Confirmation confirmation can be used to explain why some beliefs persist when the initial evidence for them is removed. The effect of persistence of this belief has been demonstrated by a series of experiments that use the so-called "debriefing paradigm": participants read false evidence for hypotheses, changes in their attitudes are measured, then counterfeiting is revealed in detail. Their attitude is then measured once more to see if their beliefs return to their previous levels.
The general finding is that at least some initial beliefs remain even after full briefing. In one experiment, participants had to distinguish between real and fake suicide records. The feedback is random: some are told they are doing well while others are told they have performed badly. Even after being fully reprimanded, participants are still affected by feedback. They still think they are better or worse than average on such tasks, depending on what they initially said.
In another study, participants read job performance ratings from two firefighters, along with their responses to risk aversion tests. This fictitious data is structured to show a negative or positive relationship: some participants were told that firefighters who took the risk did better, while others were told they were less good than the risk-averse partners. Even if both case studies are correct, they will be scientifically bad evidence for conclusions about firefighters in general. However, participants found them subjectively persuasive. When case studies prove fictitious, participants' trust in a link decreases, but about half of the original effect persists. Further interviews show that participants understand debriefing and take it seriously. Participants seem to believe in debriefing, but regard information discredited as irrelevant to their personal beliefs.
The effect of advanced influences is the tendency to believe incorrect information previously learned even after being corrected. Misinformation may still affect the resulting conclusion after the correction occurs. Preferences for initial information
Experiments have shown that information is weighed more strongly when it appears at the start of the series, even when orders are not important. For example, people form a more positive impression of someone who is described as "intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, jealous" than when they are given the same words in reverse order. This effect of irrational primacy is independent of the effect of virtue in memory where the previous item in the series leaves a stronger memory footprint. Interpretation of bias offers an explanation for this effect: looking at the initial evidence, people form a working hypothesis that influences how they interpret the rest of the information.
One of the demonstrations of irrational advantage uses colored chips that are allegedly taken from two jars. The participants were notified of the color distribution of jars, and had to estimate the chances of the chips being taken from one of them. In fact, the colors appear in a prearranged sequence. The first thirty images favored one jar and the next thirty favored the other. The series is totally neutral, very rational, two jars are equally likely to be the same. However, after sixty draws, the participants liked the jars suggested by the initial thirty.
Another experiment involves a slide show of an object, seen as just a blur at first and in a slightly better focus with each of the next slides. After each slide, participants must state their best guess about what the object is. Participants who guess initially misbehave with the guess, even when the image was focused enough that the object was easily recognizable by others.
Association of illusions between events
The correlation of illusion is the tendency to see no correlation in a set of data. This trend was first shown in a series of experiments in the late 1960s. In one trial, the participants read a set of psychiatric case studies, including responses to the Rorschach inkblot test. Participants reported that homosexual men in the filming location were more likely to report seeing ankles, anus, or ambiguous sexual figures inside the inkblots. In fact, fictional case studies have been constructed so homosexual men are no more likely to report this image or, in one version of the experiment, less likely to report it than heterosexual men. In a survey, a group of experienced psychoanalysts reported a series of similar illusion associations with homosexuality.
Other studies noted symptoms experienced by rheumatic patients, along with weather conditions over a 15-month period. Almost all patients report that their pain is correlated with weather conditions, although the correlation is actually zero.
This effect is a sort of biased interpretation, in which neutral or unfavorable objective evidence is interpreted to support existing beliefs. It is also related to the bias in the hypothesis testing behavior. In assessing whether two events, such as illness and bad weather, correlate, people rely heavily on the number of positive-positive cases: in this example, examples of pain and bad weather. They relatively pay little attention to other types of observations (no pain and/or good weather). This parallels the dependence on positive tests in hypothesis testing. It may also reflect selective memory, that people may have the feeling that two events correlate because it is easier to remember the times when they happened together.
Individual differences
Mystery bias is believed to be associated with greater intelligence; However, research has shown that myside bias can be more influenced by rational thinking skills that conflict with intelligence levels. The Myside bias can cause the inability to effectively and logically evaluate the opposite side of an argument. Studies have suggested that myside bias is the absence of "active open-mindedness", which means active search why the initial idea may be wrong. Usually, myside bias is operationalized in empirical studies as the amount of evidence used to support their side as opposed to the opposite side.
A study has found individual differences in myside bias. This study investigates individual differences gained through learning in a cultural context and is subject to change. The researchers found important individual differences in the argument. Studies have shown that individual differences such as deductive reasoning ability, ability to overcome belief bias, epistemological understanding, and thought disposition are significant predictors of reasoning and generate arguments, counterarguments, and rebuttals.
A study by Christopher Wolfe and Anne Britt also investigated how participants' views of "what makes a good argument?" can be a source of mythic bias that affects the way a person formulates his own argument. This study investigates individual differences in argument schemes and asks participants to write essays. Participants were randomly assigned to write essays either for or against the side they liked from an argument and given a research instruction that took a balanced or unlimited approach. Balanced research instruction leads participants to create a "balanced" argument, that is, which includes pros and cons; unlimited research instructions do not include anything about how to make an argument.
Overall, the results showed that balanced research instruction significantly increased the incidence of conflicting information in the argument. These data also reveal that personal belief is not a biased source; however, those participants, who believed that good arguments were fact-based, were more likely to show self-bias than other participants. This evidence is consistent with the claims filed in Baron articles - that people's opinions on what makes good thinking can affect how arguments are generated.
History
Informal observation
Prior to psychological research on confirmatory bias, the phenomenon has been observed throughout history. Beginning with the Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460 BC - about 395 BC), who wrote of the wrong betrayal in the Peloponnesian War; "... because it is a human habit to believe in the careless expectations of what they long for, and to use sovereign excuses to get rid of what they do not like." The Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), recorded it in his famous work, Divine Comedy , where St. Thomas Aquinas warns Dante when meeting at Paradise, "opinion - in a hurry - can often tend to the wrong side, and then affection for his own opinion binds, limits the mind". Ibn Khaldun noticed the same effect in his book Muqaddimah :
"Ignorance naturally overwrites historical information.There are various reasons that make this unavoidable.One is the allegiance to opinions and schools [...] if the soul is infected with alignments to a particular opinion or flow, it accepts without a moment of dubious information which is acceptable.The prejudices and alignments obscure the critical faculty and hinder critical inquiry.The result is false acceptance and dissemination. "
The English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon (1561-1626), in Novum Organum notes that a biased judgment of evidence encourages "all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments or the like". He writes:
Human understanding when it has adopted an opinion... draws all other things to support and approve it. And although there are larger numbers and weight samples that can be found on the other side, but these either ignore or underestimate, or by some discriminating or disallowed distinctions. [.]
In the second volume of his book The World as Will and Representation <1843), the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer observes that "The adopted hypothesis gives us a spy for everything that affirms that and makes us blind to everything contrary to it. "
Dalam esainya (1897) "What Is Art?" Novelis Rusia Leo Tolstoy menulis,
I know that most men - not only those who are considered smart, but even those who are very intelligent, and capable of understanding the most difficult scientific, mathematical or philosophical problems - can rarely distinguish even the simplest and most obvious truths if it such as requiring them to acknowledge the falsity of the conclusions they have established, perhaps with many of the difficulties - the conclusions they are proud of, that they have taught others, and where they have built their lives.
Wason's research on hypothesis testing
The term "biased confirmation" was coined by the English psychologist Peter Wason. For experiments published in 1960, he challenged participants to identify the rules that apply to triple the numbers. At first, they were told that (2,4,6) were in accordance with the rules. Participants can generate three times as much as themselves and the experiment tells them whether each triple matches the rules.
Although the real rules are only "ascending order," participants have great difficulty finding them, often announcing far more specific rules, such as "the middle number is the average of the first and the last." Participants seem to only test positive examples - threefold that comply with the rules they hypothesized. For example, if they think the rule is, "Any number two is bigger than its predecessor," they will offer triple that conforms to this rule, such as (11,13,15) than the triple that violates it, such as (11,12,19).
Wason accepts falsificationism, which he says the scientific test of the hypothesis is a serious attempt to falsify it. He interprets the result as indicating a preference for confirmation of forgery, hence the term "confirmation bias". Wason also uses a confirmation bias to explain the experimental results of his chosen assignment. In this task, participants are given partial information about a set of objects, and must specify what further information they need to tell whether the conditional rules or not ("If A, then B") apply. It has been repeatedly found that people perform poorly in these various forms of testing, in many cases ignoring information potentially denying the rule.
Klayman and criticism Ha
A 1987 paper by Joshua Klayman and Young-Won Ha argued that the Wason experiment did not really indicate a bias against confirmation. In contrast, Klayman and Ha interpret results in terms of a tendency to make tests consistent with work hypotheses. They call it a "positive test strategy". This strategy is an example of heuristics: incomplete reasoning shortcuts but easy to quantify. Klayman and Ha use Bayesian probability theory and information as a standard for testing their hypotheses, rather than falsification used by Wason. According to these ideas, each answer to a question produces a different amount of information, which depends on one's initial beliefs. So the scientific test of the hypothesis is one that is expected to produce the most information. Because the content of information depends on the initial probability, a positive test can be very informative or uninformative. Klayman and Ha argue that when people think about realistic problems, they look for specific answers with little initial probability. In this case, a positive test is usually more informative than a negative test. However, in the task of discovery of the Wason rule, the answer - three numbers in ascending order - is vast, so a positive test is unlikely to produce an informative answer. Klayman and Ha support their analysis by citing experiments that use the label "DAX" and "MED" in lieu of "by the rules" and "not according to the rules". This avoidable implies that the goal is to find a low probability rule. The participants were much more successful with this trial version.
In this light and other criticisms, the focus of research moves away from confirmation versus forgery to test whether people are testing hypotheses in an informative, or informative but positive way. The search for a "true" confirmation bias causes psychologists to see more effects in the way people process information.
Description
Confirmation confirmation is often described as a result of an automated and accidental strategy rather than intentional fraud. According to Robert MacCoun, the most biased processing of evidence occurs through a combination of "cold" (cognitive) and "hot" (motivated) mechanisms.
The cognitive explanation for biased confirmation is based on the limitations of people's ability to handle complex tasks, and shortcuts, called heuristics , which they use. For example, one can assess the reliability of evidence by using heuristics availability - that is, how ready certain ideas come to mind. It is also possible that people can only focus on one thought at a time, making it difficult to test alternative hypotheses in parallel. Another heuristic is a positive test strategy identified by Klayman and Ha, where people test the hypothesis by examining cases in which they expect a property or event to occur. This heuristic avoids the difficult or impossible task of knowing how diagnostic each possible question is. However, it is universally unreliable, so one can ignore the challenge to their existing beliefs.
The explanation of motivation involves the effect of desire on belief, sometimes called "wishful thinking". It is known that people prefer pleasant thoughts rather than unpleasant ones in several ways: these are called "Pollyanna principles". Applied to arguments or sources of evidence, this may explain why the desired conclusions are more likely to be believed to be true. According to experiments that manipulate the wishes of conclusions, people demand a high standard of proof for unpleasant ideas and low standards for preferred ideas. In other words, they ask, "Can I trust this?" for some advice and, "Should I trust this?" for others. Although consistency is a desirable feature of attitudes, exaggerated drive for consistency is another potential source of bias as it can prevent people from neutrally evaluating new, surprising information. Social psychologist Ziva Kunda combines cognitive and motivational theories, arguing that motivation creates a bias, but cognitive factors determine the size of the effect.
The explanation in the cost-benefit analysis assumes that people not only test the hypothesis in a way that is not interested, but assess the cost of different errors. Using the ideas of evolutionary psychology, James Friedrich points out that people basically do not aim at the truth in testing hypotheses, but try to avoid the most costly mistakes. For example, employers may ask one-sided questions in job interviews as they focus on screening out unsuitable candidates. Yaacov Trope and Akiva Liberman's refinement of this theory assume that people compare two different types of error: accept a false hypothesis or reject the correct hypothesis. For example, someone who underestimates a friend's honesty may treat him with suspicion and weaken friendships. Overestimating the friend's honesty may also be expensive, but less so. In this case, it would be rational to seek, evaluate, or recall their proof of honesty in a biased manner. When someone gives the initial impression of being an introvert or an extrovert, questions that match the impression appear more empathic. This shows that when talking to someone who seems introverted, it is a sign of a better social skill to ask, "Do you feel awkward in social situations?" rather than, "Do you like noisy parties?" The relationship between confirmatory bias and social skills is corroborated by the study of how students can get to know others. Self-monitored pupils, more environmentally sensitive and social norms, ask more appropriate questions when interviewing high-status staff members than when getting to know their students.
Psychologists Jennifer Lerner and Philip Tetlock distinguish two different types of thought processes. explorative thinking is neutrally considering many points of view and tries to anticipate all possible objections to a particular position, while the confirmation thinking seeks to justify a particular point of view. Lerner and Tetlock say that when people expect to justify their position to others whose views they already know, they will tend to adopt similar positions with those people, and then use confirmation thinking to improve their own credibility. However, if external parties are too aggressive or critical, people will escape from the mind altogether, and only assert their personal opinions without justification. Lerner and Tetlock say that people only encourage themselves to think critically and logically when they know beforehand they will need to explain themselves to others who have good information, are genuinely interested in the truth, and their uninitiated views. Because these conditions rarely exist, they argue, most people use the confirmation mind most of the time.
Consequences
In finance
Confirmation confirmation can cause investors to be overconfident, ignoring evidence that their strategy will lose money. In the study of stock market politics, investors make more profit when they reject the bias. For example, participants who interpret the candidate's debate performance in a neutral way rather than favor are more likely to benefit. To counteract the confirmation bias effect, investors can try to adopt an opposite viewpoint "for argument sake". In one technique, they imagine that their investment has collapsed and asked themselves why this can happen.
In physical and mental health
Raymond Nickerson, a psychologist, blamed the confirmation bias for ineffective medical procedures used for centuries before the arrival of scientific medicine. If a patient recovers, the medical authority considers the treatment to be successful, rather than seeking an alternative explanation such that the disease has traveled naturally. The bias of assimilation is a factor in the modern appeal of alternative medicine, whose supporters are influenced by positive anecdotal evidence but treating hyper-critical scientific evidence. Confirmation bias may also cause the doctor to perform unnecessary medical procedures due to pressure from persistent patients. Cognitive therapy was developed by Aaron T. Beck in the early 1960s and has become a popular approach. According to Beck, biased information processing is a factor in depression. His approach teaches people to treat the evidence impartially, rather than selectively reinforcing the negative outlook. Phobias and hypochondria have also been shown to involve confirmation bias for threatening information.
In politics and law
Nickerson argues that reasoning in the context of justice and politics is sometimes unconsciously biased, supporting the conclusion that judges, juries or governments have committed to. Because the evidence in the jury trials can be complicated, and the jury often reaches decisions about the verdict early on, it makes sense to expect polarization effects of attitudes. The prediction that the jury will be more extreme in their view because they see more evidence has been borne out in experiments with artificial tests. Both the inquisitorial criminal justice system and hostilities are influenced by confirmatory bias.
Confirmation of bias can be a factor in creating or expanding conflict, from emotionally charged debates to war: by interpreting evidence to their advantage, any opposing party can become overconfident that it is in a stronger position. On the other hand, confirmation bias can lead to people ignoring or misinterpreting signs of an imminent or recent conflict. For example, psychologists Stuart Sutherland and Thomas Kida each argue that US Navy Admiral Husband E. Kimmel showed a confirmation bias when downplaying the first signs of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
A two-decade study of political experts by Philip E. Tetlock found that, overall, their predictions were not much better than coincidences. Tetlock divides the experts into "foxes" that keep some hypotheses, and the more "dogmatic" hedgehogs. In general, hedgehogs are much less accurate. Tetlock blames their failure on biased confirmation - in particular, their inability to exploit new information as opposed to their existing theories.
In paranormal
One factor in the appeal of alleged psychic readings is that the listener implements a confirmatory bias corresponding to a psychic statement for their own life. By making a large number of ambiguous statements in each sitting, the psychic gives the client more chances to find a match. This is one of the cold reading techniques, with which a psychic can give subjective reading impressively subjectively without prior information about the client. Investigator James Randi compares the transcript of client report readings about what the psychic says, and finds that the client shows a strong selective memory of "hit".
As a striking illustration of the real-world confirmation bias, Nickerson mentions the numerology pyramid: the practice of finding meaning in the proportions of the Egyptian pyramids. There are many different lengths that can be made, for example, the Great Pyramids of Giza and many ways to merge or manipulate them. It is therefore almost unavoidable that people who look at these numbers selectively will find impressive shallow correspondence, for example with Earth dimensions.
In science
The distinguishing feature of scientific thinking is the search for counterfeiting and evidence proof. However, many times in the history of science, scientists have resisted new discoveries by selectively interpreting or ignoring unfavorable data. Previous research has shown that a quality assessment of scholarly studies seems highly susceptible to confirmation bias. It has been found several times that scientists rate research that reports findings consistent with their previous beliefs better than studies that report findings that are inconsistent with their previous beliefs. However, assuming that the research question is relevant, adequate experimental design and clear and comprehensive data are described, the results found should be important for the scientific community and should not be viewed prejudically, regardless of whether they conform to current theoretical predictions.
In the context of scientific research, confirmatory bias may defend theory or research programs in the face of inadequate or even contradictory evidence; the area of ​​parapsychology has been severely affected.
An experimental confirmation bias can potentially affect which data is reported. Data that contradicts the expectations of an experiment may be more easily discarded as unreliable, resulting in a so-called drawer effect. To counter this tendency, scientific training teaches ways to prevent bias. For example, experimental designs from randomized controlled trials (combined with their systematic review) aim to minimize the source of bias. The social process of peer review is considered to reduce the biased impact of individual scientists, even though the peer review process itself may be vulnerable to such biases. Therefore confirmation bias can be very dangerous for objective evaluation of unsuitable results because individuals can assume conflicting evidence is weak in principle and give little serious thought to revising their beliefs. Scientific innovators often meet with resistance from the scientific community, and research that presents controversial results often accepts peer ratings.
In self-image
Social psychologists have identified two trends in how people seek or interpret information about themselves. Self-verification is an encouragement to strengthen existing self-image and self-development is the drive to seek positive feedback. Both are served by a confirmation bias. In experiments in which people are given feedback contrary to their self-image, they tend not to notice or remember it than when given self-verifying feedback. They reduce the impact of that information by interpreting it as unreliable. Similar experiments have found a preference for positive feedback, and those who give it, for negative feedback.
On social media, confirmation biases are amplified by the use of filter bubbles, or "algorithmic edits," which indicate individual information they are likely to approve, while excluding opposing views. Some people argue that confirmation bias is the reason why people can never escape the filter bubbles, because individuals are psychologically programmed to seek information that conforms to pre-existing values ​​and beliefs. Others further argue that the mixture both democratizes - claiming that this "algorithmic editing" eliminates diverse perspectives and information - and that unless the bubble filter algorithm is removed, voters will not be able to make informed political decisions.
See also
Note
References
Source
Further reading
Keohane, Joe (July 11, 2010), "How facts backfire: Researchers find a surprising threat to democracy: our brains", Boston Globe , NY Times
External links
- Skeptic's Dictionary: biased confirmation - Robert T. Carroll
- Teach about confirmation bias - class handouts and instructor notes by K. H. Grobman
- Confirm bias in You Are Not So Smart
- Confirmation bias learning object - interactive triple three times practice by Rod McFarland for Simon Fraser University
- Brief summary of the 1979 bias assimilation study Stanford - Keith Rollag, Babson College
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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