confirmation bias
Sign in to savetendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses
AI overview
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, favor, and remember information that supports what you already believe while overlooking information that contradicts it. It matters because this unconscious habit can prevent you from seeing the full picture, making it harder to learn new things, make good decisions, or change your mind when you should.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
Confirmation bias (also confirmatory bias, myside bias, or congeniality bias) is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs, values, or decisions. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, emotionally charged issues and deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias often comes from automatic mental habits. Studies repeatedly find that people tend to test ideas in a one sided way, mainly searching for evidence that supports what they already assume. Research on selective exposure also suggests that people differ in how strongly they defend their attitudes, with some individuals being more resistant to information that goes against their views.
Biased search for information, biased interpretation of this information and biased memory recall have been invoked to explain four specific effects: