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Confirmation Bias

Confirmation Bias. Confirmation bias means that people look for information that confirm rather than falsify a given hypothesis, e.g., if you have a friend and have to find out whether or not he is trustworthy, you may be inclined to look for behaviors that show him in a trustworthy light. .

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Confirmation Bias

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  1. Confirmation Bias Confirmation bias means that people look for information that confirm rather than falsify a given hypothesis, e.g., if you have a friend and have to find out whether or not he is trustworthy, you may be inclined to look for behaviors that show him in a trustworthy light. Contributor © POSbase 2004

  2. Confirmation Bias There may be two mechanisms that result in a confirmation bias: (1) Positive test strategy (2) Motivated reasoning © POSbase 2004

  3. Confirmation Bias In everyday life and in research, it is often difficult to say whether positive test strategy or motivated reasoning results in the confirmation bias. To illustrate the difference between positive test strategy and motivated reasoning, let us look at the example of your friend, but this time, you have to determine whether he is untrustworthy or not. © POSbase 2004

  4. Confirmation Bias If you use a positive test strategy, you look for information concerning dishonesty, but not for honesty. In this case, you would conclude that your friend is untrustworthy. You test the assumption „he is untrustworthy if I find evidence of dishonesty“. © POSbase 2004

  5. Confirmation Bias If you engage in motivated reasoning, you are motivated to look for information that shows him in positive light, confirming your prior beliefs. You test the assumption „he is trustworthy if I find evidence of honesty“, and subsequently look only for honest behaviors. © POSbase 2004

  6. Confirmation Bias Examples of research on confirmation bias: Hypothesis testing in a conceptual task (Wason, 1960) The Wason selection task (Wason, 1966) Testing a rule (Mynatt et al. 1977) Finding the cause of defect (Baron et al., 1988) Biases in memories (Snyder & Cantor, 1979) One-sided information search (Snyder & Swann, 1978) Use of diagnostic information (Trope & Bassok, 1983) „Are you happy?“ Strategies in self-judgments (Kunda et al., 1993) Weighing Pros and Cons (Shafir, 1993) The justification of predictions (Wilson & LaFleur, 1995) Motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990) © POSbase 2004

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