Confirmation Bias I (B) (3) - P
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Because we are unable to make determinations as to the releasability of another agency's information, the FOIA Case: 104412 subject material has been referred to the appropriate agency for review and direct response to you. Sincerely, fWAi 1v ~ JOHN R. CHAPMAN Chief, FOIA/PA Office NSA Initial Denial Authority Encl: ajs Confinnation bias - Intellipedia Doc I'D : 6620317 w (U) Confirmation bias I (b) (3) - P . L . 86- 36 1 UNCLASSIFIED From Intellipedia Confit·mation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that See the .Wikipedia article 1 confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true. [Note Hl] As a result, people Con{irmatio, bias gather evidence and recall infonnation from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs. For example, in reading about gun control, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and/or recall have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a stronger weighting for data encountered early in an arbitrary series) and illusory correlation (in which people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations). A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased towards confirming their existing beliefs. Later work explained these results in terms of a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring altematives. In combination with other effects, this strategy can bias the conclusions that are reached. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another proposal is that people show confirmation bias because they are pragmatically assessing the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way. Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Hence they can lead to poor decisions, especially in organizational, military, political and social contexts. Contents • I Types • 1.1 Biased search for information • 1.2 Biased interpretation • 1.3 Biased memory • 2 Related effects • 2.1 Polarization of opinion • 2.2 Persistence of discredited beliefs • 2.3 Preference for early information • 2.4 Illusory association between events • 3 History • 3 .I Informal observation • 3.2 Wason's research on hypothesis-testing • 3.3 Klayman and Ha's critique • 4 Explanations • 5 Consequences • 5 .I In fmance • 5.2 In physical and mental health • 5.3 In politics and law • 5.4 In the paranormal • 5.5 In scientific procedure • 5.6 In self-image • 6 See also • ?Notes • 8 Footnotes • 9 References • 10 Further reading • 11 External links Types Confirmation biases are effects in information processing, distinct from the behavioral confirmation effect, also called "self-fulfilling prophecy", in which people behave so as to make their expectations come true.12l Some psychologists use "confirmation bias" to refer to any way in which people avoid rejecting a belief, whether in searching for evidence, interpreting it, or recalling it from memory. Others restrict the term to selective collection of evidence[J][Note 21 Biased search for information 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 Approved for Release by NSA on 05-25-2018, FOIA Case #104412 1 of 12 5/24/2018 11:51 AM Confinnation bias - Intellipedia Doc ID: 6620317 l(b )(3) - P . L . 86 - 36 ~ ---·· 5 6 a given time.l ][ l Rather than searching through all the relevant evidence, they ask questions that are phrased so that an File:Fred Bamard07.jpg affirmative answer supports their hypothesis. [7] They look for the consequences that they would expect if their hypothesis were ' Confirmation bias has been true, rather than what would happen if it were falsePl For example, someone who is trying to identity a number using yes/no described as an internal "yes questions and suspects that the number is 3 might ask, "Is it an odd number?" People prefer this sort of question, called a man", echoing back a person's "positive test", even when a negative test such as "Is it an even number?" would yield exactly the same information[S] beliefs like Charles Dickens' However, this does not mean that people seek tests that are guaranteed to give a positive answer. In studies where subjects character Uriah Heep.141 could select either such pseudo-tests or genuinely diagnostic ones, they favored the genuinely diagnostic[9][IOJ The preference for positive tests is not itself a bias, since positive tests can be highly informative.l 11 1Howe ver, in conjunction with other effects, this strategy can confmn existing beliefs or assumptions, independently of whether they are true.l12l In real-world situations, evidence is often complex and mixed. For example, various contradictory ideas about someone could each be supported by concentrating on one aspect of his or her behavior.