Confirmation Bias¶
Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175-220.
Cited by¶
6 citations across 6 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Confirmation Bias
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This sourceComprehensive review of the seeking/interpreting of evidence partial to existing beliefs across cognitive and applied domains, including intelligence-failure post-mortems.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
Review abstract supports confirmation bias as partial evidence seeking, but does not state the claimed outcomes or intelligence-failure post-mortems.
“Confirmation bias, as the term is typically used in the psychological literature, connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand.”
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Mechanisms¶
- Cross-Boundary Escape Incident Review
- Its classic misuse is starting from the conclusion — usually "it's escape, strengthen the filter," or its mirror, "it's just noise" — and marshalling only the evidence that fits.
This sourceReviews the tendency to seek and interpret evidence in ways that confirm an existing hypothesis rather than seriously testing alternatives.
- Its classic misuse is starting from the conclusion — usually "it's escape, strengthen the filter," or its mirror, "it's just noise" — and marshalling only the evidence that fits.
- Cue-Diagnosticity Ablation Test
- The classic misuse is ablating only the cues you already believe are unimportant, in order to confirm the training is fine — the test run backwards to justify a conclusion already reached.
This sourceDefines confirmation bias as seeking or interpreting evidence in ways partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis already in hand.
- The classic misuse is ablating only the cues you already believe are unimportant, in order to confirm the training is fine — the test run backwards to justify a conclusion already reached.
- Mechanism Map
- Its failure mode is correlation laundering dressed up as rigor: a team that started from a preferred conclusion
This sourceDescribes confirmation bias as preferentially seeking or interpreting evidence in favor of an existing belief or hypothesis.
- Its failure mode is correlation laundering dressed up as rigor: a team that started from a preferred conclusion
- Motif Concordance and Recurrence Map
- And the tool is readily run backwards into pattern-hunting: name the motif you have already decided matters, then harvest the occurrences that fit and quietly drop the ones that don't.
This sourceReview of General Psychology, 2(2): 175–220 (1998). Describes confirmation bias as favoring a prior hypothesis through selective search, attention, interpretation, and retention of matching evidence while neglecting disconfirming cases.
- And the tool is readily run backwards into pattern-hunting: name the motif you have already decided matters, then harvest the occurrences that fit and quietly drop the ones that don't.
- User Research Synthesis
- Its failure mode is confirmation bias: because synthesis is interpretive and the sample is small, it is easy to synthesize toward the roadmap belief you walked in with, and easy to over-generalize from a handful of vivid users to everyone.
This sourceReview of General Psychology 2(2): 175–220, 1998. Defines confirmation bias as seeking or interpreting evidence in ways partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or hypotheses.
- Its failure mode is confirmation bias: because synthesis is interpretive and the sample is small, it is easy to synthesize toward the roadmap belief you walked in with, and easy to over-generalize from a handful of vivid users to everyone.
Verification¶
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