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In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias (or confirmatory bias) is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, leading to statistical errors. Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study. Image File history File links Please see the file description page for further information. ... David Perkins termed the phrase myside bias to refer to the tendency of people to fail to look or and to ignore evidence against what they already favor. ... Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the scientific study of mental processes and behavior. ... Cognitive science is usually defined as the scientific study either of mind or of intelligence (e. ... In statistics, the term bias is used for two different concepts. ... Cognitive bias is any of a wide range of observer effects identified in cognitive science and social psychology including very basic statistical, social attribution, and memory errors that are common to all human beings. ... Around 1960, Ray Solomonoff founded the theory of universal inductive inference, the theory of prediction based on observations. ...

Overview

Confirmation bias is a phenomenon wherein decision makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or underweigh evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis. As such, it can be thought of as a form of selection bias in collecting evidence. Selection bias is the error of distorting a statistical analysis by pre- or post-selecting the samples. ...

Among the first to investigate this phenomenon was Wason (1960), whose subjects were presented with three numbers (a triple): In mathematics, a triple is an n-tuple with n being 3. ...

and told that triple conforms to a particular rule. They were then asked to discover the rule by generating their own triples and use the feedback they received from the experimenter. Every time the subject generated a triple, the experimenter would indicate whether the triple conformed to the rule (right) or not (wrong). The subjects were told that once they were sure of the correctness of their hypothesized rule, they should announce the rule.

While the actual rule was simply “any ascending sequence”, the subjects seemed to have a great deal of difficulty in inducing it, often announcing rules that were far more complex than the correct rule. More interestingly, the subjects seemed to only test “positive” examples; that is, triples that subjects believed would conform to their rule and thus confirm their hypothesis. What the subjects did not do was attempt to falsify their hypotheses by testing triples that they believed would not conform to their rule. Wason referred to this phenomenon as the confirmation bias, whereby subjects systematically seek evidence to confirm rather than to deny their hypotheses. In mathematics, a sequence is a list of objects (or events) arranged in a linear fashion, such that the order of the members is well defined and significant. ...

The confirmation bias was Wason’s original explanation for the systematic errors made by subjects in the Wason selection task. In essence, the subjects were only choosing to examine cards that could confirm the given rule rather than disconfirm it. Confirmation bias has been used as a theory for why people believe and maintain pseudoscientific ideas. Named in honour of Peter Cathcart Wason, who first described the task, the Wason selection task is a logical puzzle which is formally equivalent to the following question: You are shown a set of four cards placed on a table each of which has a number on one side and... A pseudoscience is any body of knowledge purported to be scientific or supported by science but which fails to comply with the scientific method. ...

Social phenomena

Some have argued that confirmation bias may be the cause of self-perpetuating and self-fulfilling social beliefs. This bias may occur at least partially because negatives are inherently more difficult to process mentally than positives^{[citation needed]}. A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that, in being made, actually causes itself to become true. ...

More recent studies, however, have shown that while confirmation bias tends to be present as an initial condition, the repeated presentation of disconfirmatory data induces changes in theoretical thinking. In other words, the initial disconfirmatory data are regarded as the result of error, or some other externally attributed factor; it is only after similar results or data are repeatedly obtained that a change in causal reasoning strategies occurs.

Political bias study

In January 2006, Drew Westen and a team from Emory University announced at the annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Palm Springs, California the results of a study showing the brain activity for confirmation bias. Their results suggest the unconscious and emotion driven nature of this form of bias. Drew Westen is Professor at the Emory University Psychology and Psychiatry Departments. ... Emory University is a private university in the city of Atlanta, Georgia. ... Palm Springs is a famed Riverside County, California, desert resort city, approximately 110 miles east of Los Angeles. ...

The study was carried out during the pre-electoral period of the 2004 presidential election on 30 men, half who described themselves as strong Republicans and half as strong Democrats. During a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan the subjects were asked to assess contradictory statements by both George W. Bush and John Kerry. The scans showed that the part of the brain associated with reasoning, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, was not involved when assessing the statements. Conversely, the most active regions of the brain were those involved in processing emotions (orbitofrontal cortex), conflict resolution (anterior cingulate cortex) and making judgment about moral accountability (posterior cingulate cortex). ^[1] GOP redirects here. ... The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States; the other being the Republican Party. ... Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is the use of MRI to measure the hemodynamic response related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. ... George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the 43rd and current President of the United States, inaugurated on January 20, 2001. ... John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is the junior United States Senator from Massachusetts. ... The prefrontal cortex is the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain, lying in front of the motor and premotor areas. ... The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a region of association cortex of the human brain involved in cognitive processes such as decision making. ... Grays FIG. 727– Medial surface of left cerebral hemisphere. ... The posterior cingulate cortex is the backmost part of the cingulate cortex. ...

Dr. Westen summarised the work: ^[2]

None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones... Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts'.

These data have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but are currently under revision for publication. ^[3] Image File history File links Cquote1. ... Image File history File links Cquote2. ... Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a scholarly process used in the publication of manuscripts and in the awarding of funding for research. ... Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...

See also

• Disconfirmation bias
• Expectancy effect
• List of cognitive biases
• Informational Listening

Disconfirmation bias refers to the tendency for people to extend critical scrutiny to information which contradicts their prior beliefs and accept uncritically information that is congruent with their prior beliefs. ... The expectancy effect (or experimenter effect) arises in science when a researcher or subject expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it. ... Cognitive bias is distortion in the way humans perceive reality (see also cognitive distortion). ... // The process of informational listening focuses on the ability of an individual to understand a speaker’s message. ...

References

• Wason, P.C. (1960). On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a conceptual task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12, 129-140.
• Wason, P.C. (1966). Reasoning. In B. M. Foss (Ed.), New horizons in psychology I, 135-151. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
• Wason, P.C. (1968). Reasoning about a rule. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 20, 273-281.
• Mynatt, C.R., Doherty, M.E., & Tweney, R.D. (1977). Confirmation bias in a simulated research environment: an experimental study of scientific inference. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 29, 85-95.
• Griggs, R.A. & Cox, J.R. (1982). The elusive thematic materials effect in the Wason selection task. British Journal of Psychology, 73, 407-420.
• Nickerson, R.S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2, 175-220.
• Fugelsang, J., Stein, C., Green, A., & Dunbar, K. (2004). Theory and data interactions of the scientific mind: Evidence from the molecular and the cognitive laboratory. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 132-141.

Michael Shermer (born 1954) is a science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and editor of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... September 3 is the 246th day of the year (247th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... September 3 is the 246th day of the year (247th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Drew Westen is Professor at the Emory University Psychology and Psychiatry Departments. ...

External links

• Skeptic's Dictionary: confirmation bias
• Teaching about confirmation bias