What Is A Confirmation Bias? Confirmation Biases - Nerd-Out Wednesday Video
I provide a definition of confirmation bias based on some recent work in psychology. This is part of my Nerd-Out Wednesday series, where I talk about ideas in science that I find interesting. I thought over the next few weeks I would investigate various psychological biases that we all make.
A confirmation bias is the tendency to selectively gather and weight evidence that, and neglect evidence that does not, supports your hypothesis, rather than trying to refute it (Nickerson, 1998). In other words, we observe what we believe is true.
We all make confirmation biases in many domains. This is because we are what is called boundedly rational. That is, we are imperfect information processors, and those we look for shortcuts in life. One shortcut that works pretty well is to make a hypotheses and try to find evidence that supports it, rather than try to disconfirm it. What we really want is to find evidence that is rather diagnostic - that can refute one claim in favor of another. However, looking for this refutable evidence is very resource and time intensive. Thus, most of us don’t want to do that, and in most cases that is OK. However, there are some cases where such behaviors leads us astray.
For example, in situations where truth is very difficult to find, we might be led astray. For example, if the immediate outcome does not reflect what is truly going on. We get what are called ‘illusory correlations’ (Nisbett and Ross, 1980). We believe a correlation exists but it doesn’t. For example, in situations where you lack immediate feedback, we are likely to make poor predictions. There are many cases where this can occur.
In science, we try to falsify our claims - that is refute any proposition that we make. However, it is quite seductive to try to find evidence to support our claims. In fact, part of what we do is to try to justify our hypothesis. There is a lot of reasons to try to find evidence to support our claims: (1) institutional pressures, (2) personal emotions to not feel like a failure, and (3) success-biases.
In medicine, doctors often do not receive immediate feedback on their performance, or the feedback that they receive is biased in someway. It is well knowing that physicians do make mistakes because of this (Nickerson, 1998). You should check out the book “The Undoing Project” on this. Here is an affiliate link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393354776/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0393354776&linkCode=as2&tag=r3ciprocity-20&linkId=1a14ee5e0276774f14c243466edeb4c5
In general, confirmation bias leads to an adequate search for problems.
Check out:
Threats To Internal Validity - Selection Biases - Nerd-Out Wednesdays
https://youtu.be/d1MKMlHi-uc
Marketing An Idea: Fake It Until You Make It Vs Being Authentic - Small Business & Startup Saturday
https://youtu.be/2Se2w9KIEms
How To Use Knowledge And Opportunities In Your Network - Startup And Small Business Saturdays
https://youtu.be/7Gd9g1P_2Hg
What Is A Double Blind Study? - Nerd-out Wednesdays - Words In Science
https://youtu.be/ucYf_THd2_c
How Do You Analyze Data In Research When Nothing Works? - Nerd-Out Wednesday
https://youtu.be/AqRFsv7umhk
References:
Nickerson, R.S. 1998. Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology. 2(2) 175-220.
Nisbett, R., L. Ross. 1980. Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
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David Maslach is a research professor of entrepreneurship, innovation, and business strategy, I discuss topics, such as behavioral science, strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and apply these to my new peer proofreading and editing platform. Topics include the sharing economy, altruism, investing in technology, and bounded rationality. My favorite videos pertain to incentives, goal setting, and learning from failure to drive behaviors such as weight loss, stopping telemarketers, creating novel technologies, and creating new movements.
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