For instance, the RM account pertains to the function of confirmation bias, not folk psychology. Moreover, advocates of the mindshaping view have so far left the conditions for effective mindshaping via folk-psychological ascriptions and the possible role of confirmation bias in it unexplored. In addition to offering contributions to a range of different areas of research, the RM account also casts new light on the epistemic character of confirmation bias.
The RM account offers a different perspective, suggesting that when it is directed at beliefs about social affairs, confirmation bias does often help subjects correct their mistaken conceptions to the extent that it contributes to SFPs of them. After outlining limitations of three recent proposals on the evolution of confirmation bias, I developed and supported a novel alternative, the reality-matching RM account, which holds that one of the adaptive features for which the bias evolved is that it helps us bring social reality into alignment with our beliefs.
When the bias targets positive social beliefs, this serves both the subject and the group, assisting them in their development to become, e. When it targets negative social beliefs, in promoting reality matching, the bias might contribute to ethically problematic outcomes, but it can then still support social conformity and predictability, which were perhaps especially in ancestral tribal groups adaptive. While the socially constructive aspect of confirmation bias highlighted here may not be the main or only feature of the bias that led to its evolution, it is one that has so far been overlooked in the evolutionary theorizing on confirmation bias.
If we attend to it, an account of the function of confirmation bias becomes available that coheres with data from across the psychological sciences, manages to avoid many of the shortcomings of competitor views, and has explanatory benefits that help advance the research on the function, nature, and epistemic character of the bias.
I will come back to this view and demarcate it from my account of confirmation bias here in Sect. It might be proposed that when participants in the experiment seek reasons for their judgments, perhaps they take themselves already to have formed the judgements for good reasons and then wonder what these reasons might have been.
Why would they seek reasons against a view that they have formed by their own lights for good reasons? If it is a general default tendency to assume that any view that one holds rests on good reasons, then that would again suggest the presence of a confirmation bias. SFPs can also accumulate when they occur across different interactions, and in contemporary societies, overall accumulative SFP effects of negative social beliefs capturing, e.
I shall return to the possible SFP-related benefits of nowadays highly negative social conceptions, i. That is, optimists about themselves display a diminished sensitivity for negative information that is in tension with self-related trait optimism ibid.
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For instance, new channels provide information even the same news differently from each other on complex issues i. People also tend to search for and interpret evidence with respect to their religious beliefs if any. For instance, on the topics of abortion and transgender rights, people whose religions are against such things will interpret this information differently than others and will look for evidence to validate what they believe.
Similarly, those who religiously reject the theory of evolution will either gather information disproving evolution or hold no official stance on the topic. There are several explanations as to why humans possess confirmation bias, including this tendency being an efficient way to process information, protect self-esteem, and minimize cognitive dissonance.
Confirmation bias serves as an efficient way to process information because of the limitless information humans are exposed to. To form an unbiased decision, one would have to critically evaluate every piece of information present which is unfeasible, therefore people only tend to look for information desired to form their conclusions Casad, People are susceptible to confirmation bias to protect their self-esteem to know that their beliefs are accurate. To make themselves feel confident, they tend to look for information that supports their existing beliefs Casad, Cognitive dissonance also explains why confirmation bias is adaptive.
Confirmation bias consistently shapes the way we look for and interpret information that influences our decisions in this society, ranging from homes to global platforms. This bias prevents people from gathering information objectively. During the election campaign, people tend to look for information confirming their perspectives on different candidates while ignoring any information contradictory to their views.
Confirmation bias also affects employment diversity because preconceived ideas about different social groups can introduce discrimination though it might be unconscious and impact the recruitment process Agarwal, Existing beliefs of a certain group being more competent than the other is the reason why particular races and gender are represented the most in companies today.
To avoid being susceptible to confirmation bias, start questioning your research methods and sources used to obtain their information. Expanding the types of sources used in searching for information could provide different aspects on a particular topic and offer levels of credibility. There are many cognitive biases that characterize as subtypes of confirmation bias.
Following are two of the subtypes:. The halo effect occurs when people use impressions from a single trait to form conclusions about other unrelated attributes.
It is heavily influenced by the first impression. Research on this effect was pioneered by American psychologist Edward Thorndike who in described ways officers rated their soldiers on different traits based on first impression Neugaard, This involves people choosing to engage only with information that supports their preexisting beliefs and decisions, while ignoring information that contradicts them. Though the two phenomena are strongly related, and though they both involve trying to minimize cognitive dissonance, challenge avoidance and reinforcement seeking are not necessarily linked with each other, and they do not have to occur at the same time.
Moreover, people react differently to these two types of information, since in order to mitigate the negative emotions and resolve the cognitive dissonance that occurs as a result of encountering contradictory information, individuals look for ways to discount this information, something that they do not have to do when encountering confirmatory information.
Overall, while reinforcement seeking and challenge avoidance are two similar phenomena that stand at the core of the confirmation bias, they are distinct from one another, since they affect people in different ways, and since they can occur separately from one another. So far, we saw what the confirmation bias is, how it affects people, and why people experience it.
As such, in the following sections you will first learn how you can reduce the confirmation bias that other people experience, before moving on to see how you can reduce the confirmation bias that you experience yourself.
There are various things that you can do to reduce the influence that the confirmation bias has on people. These methods generally revolve around trying to counteract the cognitive mechanisms that promote the confirmation bias in the first place.
As such, these methods generally involve trying to get people to overcome their tendency to focus on and prefer confirmatory information, or their tendency to avoid and reject challenging information, while also encouraging them to conduct a valid reasoning process.
Specifically, the following are some of the most notable techniques that you can use to reduce the confirmation bias in people:. Different techniques will be more effective for reducing the confirmation bias in different situations, and it is generally most effective to use a combination of techniques, while taking into account relevant situational and personal factors. Furthermore, in addition to the above techniques, which are aimed at reducing the confirmation bias in particular, there are additional debiasing techniques that you can use to help people overcome their confirmation bias.
This includes, for example, getting people to slow down their reasoning process, creating favorable conditions for optimal decision making, and standardizing the decision-making process. Overall, to reduce the confirmation bias in others, you can use various techniques that revolve around trying to counteract the cognitive mechanisms that promote the confirmation bias in the first place.
This includes, for example, making people aware of this bias, making discussions be about finding the right answer instead of defending an existing belief, minimizing the unpleasantness associated with being wrong, encouraging people to give information sufficient consideration, and asking people to think about why their preferred hypothesis might be wrong or why competing hypotheses could be right. To mitigate the confirmation bias in yourself, you can use similar techniques to those that you would use to mitigate it in others.
Specifically, you can do the following:. An added benefit of many of these techniques is that they can help you understand opposing views better, which is important when it comes to explaining your own stance and communicating with others on the topic. In addition, you can also use general debiasing techniques , such as standardizing your decision-making process and creating favorable conditions for assessing information. Furthermore, keep in mind that, as is the case with reducing the confirmation bias in others, different techniques will be more effective than others, both in general and in particular circumstances.
You should take this into account, and try to find the approach that works best for you in any given situation. Finally, note that in some ways, debiasing yourself can be easier than debiasing others, since other people are often not as open to your debiasing attempts as you yourself are. At the same time, however, debiasing yourself is also more difficult in some ways, since we often struggle to notice our own blind spots, and to identify areas where we are affected by cognitive biases in general, and the confirmation bias in particular.
Overall, to reduce the confirmation bias in yourself, you can use similar techniques to those that you would use to reduce it in others. This includes, for example, maintaining awareness of this bias, focusing on trying to find the right answer rather than proving that you were right, dedicating sufficient time and effort to analyzing information, clearly outlining your reasoning, thinking of reasons why your preferred hypothesis might be wrong, and coming up with alternative hypotheses.
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