Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency to selectively interpret information in a way that reinforces preexisting beliefs, while overlooking or dismissing contradictory information. This psychological phenomenon can stem from various factors, including personal anxieties, prejudices, or a strong desire to validate one’s own opinions. It affects how individuals form opinions, which can be based either on objective analysis of verified facts or on subjective interpretations influenced by emotions and personal values.
The concept was formalized in the mid-twentieth century through the work of British psychologist Peter Wason, who discovered this bias while studying deductive reasoning. The implications of confirmation bias are wide-ranging; it can lead to innocuous preferences, such as favoring positive reviews of a favorite film, but it can also result in significant negative consequences. For instance, individuals with low self-esteem might misinterpret social cues, resulting in a cycle of negative thoughts.
In broader societal contexts, confirmation bias can exacerbate divisions, particularly in politics, where it leads individuals to cling to unfounded beliefs despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Notable examples include conspiracy theories surrounding political figures and the anti-vaccination movement, where selective attention to information has significant public health ramifications. Overall, confirmation bias showcases the complex interplay between cognition and belief, demonstrating how individuals navigate information in a way that often maintains their existing viewpoints.
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Subject Terms
Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the inclination to interpret information selectively so that it reinforces a preestablished set of beliefs. There are two ways of forming opinions: through objective or subjective analyses. Someone who uses an objective way of interpreting data relies solely on verified fact; when using a subjective perspective, there is a greater reliance on emotions, preexisting personal beliefs, and other values that cannot be necessarily confirmed by fact. Confirmation bias exists when someone is more likely to look for, notice, and cite information that corroborates their preexisting subjective opinions about something. Conversely, any information that contradicts their preexisting belief is more likely to be ignored, dismissed as false, or twisted to fit a pre-ascribed agenda.
Overview
There are many examples throughout history of philosophers and other observers commenting on people's tendency to favor information supporting their own beliefs over information challenging those beliefs. However, the concept of confirmation bias only became formalized in psychological research in the mid-twentieth century. The foundational experiments on the subject were developed by British psychologist Peter Wason in the 1960s as part of his studies on deductive reasoning. Wason found that most people struggled to solve certain logic puzzles, including what became known as the Wason selection task, and that participants tended to focus their efforts on confirming expected information rather than disproving that information. Wason subsequently coined the term "confirmation bias" to describe this tendency, and while his original studies have been subject to various critiques from later researchers, the concept proved highly influential in psychology and beyond.
Confirmation bias can be the result of any number of factors. It may be derived from anxieties, paranoias, prejudices, or simply a firm desire to validate a person's own opinion. Virtually everyone is guilty of confirmation bias at some point, to some degree. However, the impact of such a bias can vary widely depending on the context. Some examples may be innocuous, such as tending to notice positive reviews of one's favorite film while ignoring negative reviews. In other cases, though, confirmation bias can harm an individual's well-being. For example, people with low self-esteem may believe that others are deliberately excluding them from activities or purposefully avoiding them, even when they have no evidence of such action. Instead, they interpret the actions of the people around them to confirm their anxieties, creating a feedback loop of negative thoughts and emotions.
In some cases, a person with a confirmation bias may have such a strongly held belief in something that they cannot be convinced that it is false, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. These biases are also sometimes dismissed as wishful thinking or self-deception. Many psychologists suggest that these types of confirmation biases may be used to shield people from things that they fear or do not like.
Such strong confirmation biases can have broad implications for society as a whole. This is often seen in politics, serving to further entrench partisan divisions. At times—especially if given a broad enough platform by high-profile individuals and the media—this can go beyond debate over subjective policy issues and cause widespread counterfactual belief. For instance, during the 2008 US presidential election, some opponents of Democratic candidate Barack Obama were attracted to a conspiracy theory that Obama had not been born in the United States and therefore was ineligible to be president. Many of these opponents persisted in this belief even when presented with hard evidence to the contrary; when shown a copy of Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate, some insisted that it had been forged. So-called birthers specifically sought out "evidence" that served only to confirm what they already thought, while dismissing or attacking any facts that might contradict these biases. Another prominent example of classic confirmation bias can be seen in the anti-vaccination movement. Vaccine skeptics tend to pay close attention to any study or news story that raises concerns about vaccine safety, but ignore or challenge the much larger body of scientific evidence supporting vaccination. Experts have identified the growth of the anti-vaccination movement as a significant threat to public health, showing how confirmation biases can have substantial real-world impact.
Furthermore, studies have shown that the mere repetition of false news or questionable facts makes people more inclined to believe such stories, even when they are later refuted. In cases where these stories corroborate people's existing beliefs, confirmation bias may help to popularize such myths. Researchers note that this has major implications for society, especially given the unprecedented globalization of information through the internet and wireless communications technology.
Bibliography
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