this topic has come up several times recently so i thought i would share. my theory is that mcdonald's always places the pickle directly over the white circle in their cheesburgers.Among the first to investigate this phenomenon was Peter Cathcart Wason (1960), whose 2-4-6 problem presented subjects with three numbers (a triple):
2 4 6 Subjects were told that the triple conforms to a particular rule. They were then asked to discover the rule by generating their own triples and using the feedback they received from the experimenter. Every time the subject generated a triple, the experimenter would indicate whether the triple conformed to the rule. The subjects were told that once they were sure of the correctness of their hypothesized rule, they should announce the rule.
While the actual rule was simply “any ascending sequence”, the subjects seemed to have a great deal of difficulty in inducing it, often announcing rules that were far more complex than the correct rule. The subjects seemed to test only “positive” examples—triples the subjects believed would conform to their rule and confirm their hypothesis. What they did not do was attempt to challenge or falsify their hypotheses by testing triples that they believed would not conform to their rule.
psychology lesson of the day
Confirmation bias is where you subconciously ignore any evidence that disproves a theory you have. here is an excerp from wikipedia:
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Yeah, this way of thinking is very misleading. It implies that confirmation bias occurs frequently and with significant effects.
ReplyDeleteWhen you gave me this example, you failed to emphasize the key points.
1) These numbers are following a rule. The word pattern is typically used to describe a set of numbers which are related in a particular way, not a relative relationship. This interpretation of mine comes from my past experiences but also through an improper definition of the task.
2) The certainty of my hypothesis was mistreated. Your immediate response to my "guess" was "you failed". You never stated I would have only one guess, that it had to be completely right the first time, or that I had to be completely certain.
So over all, your explanation was terribly short, and even my clarifying questions didn't adequately help me understand the point. But even more fundamentally, this portrayal of confirmation bias is itself misleading. In an unrealistic, and ill defined environment, of course people will make decisions based on too little information. When decisions gain importance and expectations of good information are in place, I would expect confirmation bias to play a minimal role in decision making.