Abstract

Confirmation bias is often used as an umbrella term for many related phenomena. Information searches, evidence interpretation, and memory recall are the three main components of the thinking process involved in hypothesis testing most relevant to investigations of confirmation bias; yet these have rarely been explored using a unified paradigm. Therefore, this paper examines how confirmation bias works in each of these three stages of reasoning, using four controversial topics. Participants (N = 199) first indicated their attitudes and then answered tasks measuring confirmation bias. The results showed that confirmation bias was most prevalent in information search as participants tended to search for information confirming their prior attitudes. During information interpretation, confirmation bias occurred only for more polarizing topics. On the other hand, our results did not show confirmation bias in memory recall, as there was no difference in recall of information confirming or disconfirming prior attitudes for any of the topics. Although our attitudes affect the way we process information, it seems the effect varies depending on the reasoning stage, and this can have implications for debiasing strategies.

摘要

确认偏差通常被用作许多相关现象的总称。信息搜索、证据解释和记忆回忆是与确认偏差调查最相关的假设检验所涉及的思维过程的三个主要组成部分；然而，这些都很少使用统一的范式进行探索。因此，本文使用四个有争议的主题来检验确认偏差如何在这三个推理阶段中的每一个中发挥作用。参与者（N = 199）首先表明他们的态度，然后回答测量确认偏差的任务。结果表明，确认偏差在信息搜索中最为普遍，因为参与者倾向于搜索确认其先前态度的信息。在信息解释过程中，确认偏误只发生在两极分化的主题上。另一方面，我们的结果没有显示记忆回忆的确认偏差，因为在回忆确认或不确认任何主题的先前态度的信息方面没有差异。尽管我们的态度会影响我们处理信息的方式，但似乎效果因推理阶段而异，这可能对去偏策略产生影响。