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CONFIRMATION BIAS
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.
For example, if we already believe or want to believe that someone can speak to our deceased relatives, then we will notice when they say things which are accurate but forget how often that person says things which are simply incorrect. Another good example would be how people notice when they get a phone call from a person they were just thinking about but don’t remember how often they didn’t get such a call when thinking about a person.
Experiments have repeatedly found that people tend to test hypotheses in a one-sided way, by searching for evidence consistent with the hypothesis they hold at a given time. Rather than searching through all the relevant evidence, they ask questions that are phrased so that an affirmative answer supports their hypothesis. They look for the consequences that they would expect if their hypothesis were true, rather than what would happen if it were false.
People also tend to weigh information more strongly when it appears early in a series, even when the order is unimportant. For example, people form a more positive impression of someone described as "intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious" than when they are given the same words in reverse order.
Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of confirmation bias.
CONSEQUENCES
In finance, confirmation bias can lead investors to be overconfident, ignoring evidence that their strategies will lose money
In medicine, confirmation bias is seen as responsible for the ineffective procedures that were used for centuries before the arrival of scientific medicine. If a patient recovered, medical authorities counted the treatment as successful, rather than looking for alternative explanations such as that the disease had run its natural course.
On a lighter note,one factor in the appeal of 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.
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.
For example, if we already believe or want to believe that someone can speak to our deceased relatives, then we will notice when they say things which are accurate but forget how often that person says things which are simply incorrect. Another good example would be how people notice when they get a phone call from a person they were just thinking about but don’t remember how often they didn’t get such a call when thinking about a person.
Experiments have repeatedly found that people tend to test hypotheses in a one-sided way, by searching for evidence consistent with the hypothesis they hold at a given time. Rather than searching through all the relevant evidence, they ask questions that are phrased so that an affirmative answer supports their hypothesis. They look for the consequences that they would expect if their hypothesis were true, rather than what would happen if it were false.
People also tend to weigh information more strongly when it appears early in a series, even when the order is unimportant. For example, people form a more positive impression of someone described as "intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious" than when they are given the same words in reverse order.
Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of confirmation bias.
CONSEQUENCES
In finance, confirmation bias can lead investors to be overconfident, ignoring evidence that their strategies will lose money
In medicine, confirmation bias is seen as responsible for the ineffective procedures that were used for centuries before the arrival of scientific medicine. If a patient recovered, medical authorities counted the treatment as successful, rather than looking for alternative explanations such as that the disease had run its natural course.
On a lighter note,one factor in the appeal of 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.
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