confirmation bias

[kon-fer-mey-shuhn bahy-uhs]

noun

Psychology.

1. bias that results from the tendency to process and analyze information in such a way that it supports one’s preexisting ideas and convictions: Unfortunately, their experimental method was proven invalid due to confirmation bias.

   Confirmation bias is a major issue when we get all our news from social media sites.

   Unfortunately, their experimental method was proven invalid due to confirmation bias.

Word History and Origins

Origin of confirmation bias¹

Coined in 1960 by English psychologist Peter Wason

Example Sentences

The Babushnikovs were in the grip of a kind of faulty logic that psychologists nowadays call “confirmation bias,” but that the rest of us might simply think of as being Babushkinov, through and through: when new facts threatened to upend their opinions, they simply chose to believe what they wished was true, and ignored all evidence to the contrary.

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The human brain does not like changing its mind or admitting it was wrong, a design flaw that psychologists call “confirmation bias.”

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It creates what psychologists call confirmation bias.

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As Tufts University’s Raymond Nickerson notes, “If one were to attempt to identify a single problematic aspect of human reasoning that deserves attention above all others, the confirmation bias would have to be among the candidates for consideration.”

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What the Roberson case shows is that the justice didn’t foresee how confirmation bias would keep holdouts locked into their support of capital punishment long after it became clear that the death-penalty system was irretrievably broken.

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