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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Confirmation bias | 9/11 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:49:42.474584+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Paranormal beliefs === One factor in the appeal of alleged psychic readings is that listeners apply a confirmation bias which fits the psychic's statements to their own lives. By making a large number of ambiguous statements in each sitting, the psychic gives the client more opportunities to find a match. This is one of the techniques of cold reading, with which a psychic can deliver a subjectively impressive reading without any prior information about the client. Investigator James Randi compared the transcript of a reading to the client's report of what the psychic had said, and found that the client showed a strong selective recall of the "hits". As a striking illustration of confirmation bias in the real world, Nickerson mentions numerological pyramidology: the practice of finding meaning in the proportions of the Egyptian pyramids. There are many different length measurements that can be made of, for example, the Great Pyramid of Giza and many ways to combine or manipulate them. Hence it is almost inevitable that people who look at these numbers selectively will find superficially impressive correspondences, for example with the dimensions of the Earth.
=== Recruitment and selection === Unconscious cognitive bias (including confirmation bias) in job recruitment can affect hiring decisions and can potentially prohibit a diverse and inclusive workplace. There are a variety of unconscious biases that can affect recruitment decisions, and confirmation bias is one of the major ones, especially during the interview stage. The interviewer may select a candidate that confirms their own beliefs, even though other candidates are equally or better qualified.
== Associated effects and outcomes ==
=== Polarization of opinion ===
When people with opposing views interpret new information in a biased way, their views can move even further apart. This is called "attitude polarization". The effect was demonstrated by an experiment that involved drawing a series of red and black balls from one of two concealed "bingo baskets". Participants knew that one basket contained 60 percent black and 40 percent red balls; the other, 40 percent black and 60 percent red. The experimenters looked at what happened when balls of alternating color were drawn in turn, a sequence that does not favor either basket. After each ball was drawn, participants in one group were asked to state out loud their judgments of the probability that the balls were being drawn from one or the other basket. These participants tended to grow more confident with each successive draw—whether they initially thought the basket with 60 percent black balls or the one with 60 percent red balls was the more likely source, their estimate of the probability increased. Another group of participants were asked to state probability estimates only at the end of a sequence of drawn balls, rather than after each ball. They did not show the polarization effect, suggesting that it does not necessarily occur when people simply hold opposing positions, but rather when they openly commit to them. A less abstract study was the Stanford biased interpretation experiment, in which participants with strong opinions about the death penalty read about mixed experimental evidence. Twenty-three percent of the participants reported that their views had become more extreme, and this self-reported shift correlated strongly with their initial attitudes. In later experiments, participants also reported their opinions becoming more extreme in response to ambiguous information. However, comparisons of their attitudes before and after the new evidence showed no significant change, suggesting that the self-reported changes might not be real. Based on these experiments, Deanna Kuhn and Joseph Lao concluded that polarization is a real phenomenon but far from inevitable, only happening in a small minority of cases, and it was prompted not only by considering mixed evidence, but by merely thinking about the topic. Charles Taber and Milton Lodge argued that the Stanford team's result had been hard to replicate because the arguments used in later experiments were too abstract or confusing to evoke an emotional response. The Taber and Lodge study used the emotionally charged topics of gun control and affirmative action. They measured the attitudes of their participants towards these issues before and after reading arguments on each side of the debate. Two groups of participants showed attitude polarization: those with strong prior opinions and those who were politically knowledgeable. In part of this study, participants chose which information sources to read, from a list prepared by the experimenters. For example, they could read arguments on gun control from the National Rifle Association of America and the Brady Anti-Handgun Coalition. Even when instructed to be even-handed, participants were more likely to read arguments that supported their existing attitudes than arguments that did not. This biased search for information correlated well with the polarization effect. The backfire effect is a name for the finding that given evidence against their beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe even more strongly. The phrase was coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler in 2010. However, subsequent research has since failed to replicate findings supporting the backfire effect. One study conducted out of the Ohio State University and George Washington University studied 10,100 participants with 52 different issues expected to trigger a backfire effect. While the findings did conclude that individuals are reluctant to embrace facts that contradict their already held ideology, no cases of backfire were detected. The backfire effect has since been noted to be a rare phenomenon rather than a common occurrence (compare the boomerang effect).
=== Persistence of discredited beliefs ===