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| Topic: Confirmation Bias | |
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Confirmation bias Confirmation bias (or myside bias[1]) is a tendency for people to prefer information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses, independently of whether they are true.[2][3] People can reinforce their existing attitudes by selectively collecting new evidence, by interpreting evidence in a biased way or by selectively recalling information from memory.[4] Some psychologists use "confirmation bias" for any of these three cognitive biases, while others restrict the term to selective collection of evidence, using assimilation bias for biased interpretation.[5][2] People tend to test hypotheses in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and neglecting alternatives.[4][6] This strategy is not necessarily a bias, but combined with other effects it can reinforce existing beliefs.[7][4] The biases appear in particular for issues that are emotionally significant (including some personal and political topics) and for established beliefs that shape the individual's expectations.[4][8][9] Biased search, interpretation and/or recall have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme as the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs remain after the evidence for them is taken away)[10], the irrational primacy effect (a stronger weighting for data encountered early in an arbitrary series)[11] and illusory correlation (in which people falsely perceive an association between two events).[12] Confirmation biases are effects in information processing, distinct from the behavioral confirmation effect (also called self-fulfilling prophecy), in which people's expectations influence their own behavior.[13] They can lead to disastrous decisions, especially in organizational, military and political contexts.[14][15] Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs.[9] from wikipedia |
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An interesting topic indeed.
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So common it makes me want to cry.
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Edited by
s1owhand
on
Sat 02/20/10 10:59 AM
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polywater and cold fusion
  for an interesting read try: Langmuir's talk on Pathological Science (December 18, 1953) NOW ONLINE  http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken/Langmuir/langmuir.htm |
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You know, it's not just an interesting observation.
Confirmation Bias kills people. Of all the pilot-error attributed airline crashes in the last 10 years, 90% cited some form of confirmation bias as a contributing factor. We had to do a lot of study into it as part of our Air Traffic Pilot's Licence (ATPL), and pretty much everything about decision making in single-pilot operations is based around avoiding or forstalling confirmation bias in it's various forms. But, as interesting as that all is, I'm really replying to pick up on the last little bit of the OP - Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs. I forget what this is called, but it does have it's own name. It's encountered in programming on a regular basis - where someone relatively inexperienced will claim greater knowledge than someone with a great deal more experience. They simply don't know enough to grasp how little they know. It's an interesting effect... M |
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Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. - Alexander Pope
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 (Please remember, this is a comic.) |
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What a wonderful thread!
Now go to my Luckenback, Texas thread and test it out. |
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(Please remember, this is a comic.) Cheers! |
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For those that are interested, there is more geek humor at http://www.xkcd.com
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