Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is a Cognitive Bias which describes the tendency to cherry-pick information that confirms people’s existing beliefs or ideas. It claims people tend to unconsciously select information that supports their views, but ignore non-supportive information, and that they tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position.

Later research has drawn into question the validity of this bias in real-world situations:

Since then, several studies have obtained results that challenge the common beliefs about confirmation bias. These studies showed that most people actually are thoughtful enough to prefer genuinely diagnostic tests when given that option (Kunda, 1999; Trope & Bassok, 1982; Devine et al., 1990).

[..]

But that ploy, to discourage decision-makers from seeking to confirm their pre-existing beliefs, won’t work because confirmation attempts often do make good sense. Klayman and Ha (1987) explained that under high levels of uncertainty, positive tests are more informative than negative tests (i.e., falsifications). Klayman and Ha refer to a “positive test strategy” as having clear benefits.

As a result of this work, many researchers in the judgment and decisionmaking community have reconsidered their view that the confirmation tendency is a bias and needs to be overcome. Confirmation bias seems to be losing its force within the scientific community, even as it echoes in various applied communities.

– The Curious Case of Confirmation Bias (Klein 2019)

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