Confirmation Bias: Research And Communication

Concept of Confirmation Bias

Discuss about the Confirmation Bias : Research and Communication.

Human beings are assumed to be the smartest and upgraded social animal within the world. They need to make several simple and complex choices in every moment of their life. Unlike human beings, the rest of the animal kingdom has only few choices to make namely, what they eat, they way in which they procure food and the ways in which they can extend their families avoiding the rivals from different clans. Humans also need to take up these decisions but along with it they face several complex decisions on their choice of clothing, appearance, judging others and judging the society as a whole (Weiner, 2013).

The human beings while carrying on their choices makes some perception about a people or a situation. It has been observed that these perceptions are often different form reality (Olson, 2015). But people disagree to change their looks thereby creating biasness in their behaviour. The economic and social outcomes within the society are often misinterpreted due to the existence of this fallacy.

This essay speaks about the well-recognized confirmation bias of the people. Through this essay a brief overview on the confirmation bias has been provided with focus on the short literature survey where the already existing issues of biasness has been highlighted (Park et al., 2013). A conclusion has been drawn to highlight the importance of this topic based on the findings of the existing researches.

The human being has a notion of interpreting every situation, behaviour of each person and almost all possible activities according to their perception. Often the perception formed has been self created by the people without any in-depth knowledge about the person or situation (Weiner, 2013). Peoples react to situation in accordance with these pre-assumed, inherent beliefs of theirs. According to human psychology, it has been observed that human beings have the tendency to adopt and belief in the events that support their pre-assumed beliefs of the situation. They try to interpret every situation according to their own way and try to disregard any facts that go against their beliefs (Olson, 2015). In-spite of believing in the observable reality, the irrational tendency to find, interpret and recall facts that one believes to be true is known as Confirmation Bias.

The people always try to establish the truthfulness of any hypothesis rather than trying to find a single mistake that would falsify the entire hypothesis. They always try to bolster their belief by collecting and organizing supporting facts (Reisberg, 2015). It is also termed as myside bias. It is a part of psychological biases that exists in the society. Confirmation bias can be vividly understood with the example that if sum-one believes that left handed people are creative they would try to find out the creative nature in every left handed people he meets.

Other types of biases

Other than Confirmation bias there are several types of biases perceived by the human brains. Overconfidence bias, bandwagon effect, gambler’s fallacy, current moment bias, ingroup bias and negativity bias are few such cognitive problems that persist within the human behaviour (Demaree, Weaver & Juergensen, 2015). Over confidence bias comes with consecutive success in the line of business (Patni, Choudhary & Choubey, 2015). It is mostly observed among the business entrepreneurs who feel that they are undefeated. With this notion of being the superior they fails to understand the mistakes they make and which results in the failure of their business (Abbes, 2013). The biasness of the people in predicting the occurrence of an event future with respect to the rate of its present occurrence is known as Gambler’s fallacy. The ingroup bias on other hand is the preference given to the members within a particular community by the members of the same community (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2014). Whenever people are attracted and profoundly believes in the negative views about any events then he is said to have negative bias (March & Graham, 2015). The current moment bias affects people’s present consumption behaviour as they are unable to observe the future and hence acts on the present scenario. Amongst all these mentioned cognitive behavioural imbalances, the Confirmation bias is of utmost important (Reisberg, 2015). This is because people forms the perception on the basis of some vague theory and are not ready to accept their mistakes. Few factors that lead to this biasness are self-efficacy, motivations and previous experiences. According to Salman, empirical evidences have proved the existence of confirmation bias even in the software industry. The engineers being biased about codes create them in such a manner that some loops remain in the system (Salman, 2016). This can cause a grave danger of cyber threat for the individual users and the companies using the software.

 The confirmation bias happens from the immediate impact of an individual’s desire on their real life beliefs. At the point when individuals might want a specific thought/idea to be valid, they wind up trusting it to be valid (Fowler, 2015). They are roused by being motivated using their wishful thinking. This physiological error drives the individuals to quit gathering data when the confirmation assembled so far affirms the perspectives (preferences) one might want to be valid (Park et al., 2013).

 The following section of this essay contains discussion about the impact of confirmation bias on the internet and social media.

Effect of confirmation bias on the internet and social media

Searching for different kind of information has been an unavoidable human activity after the invention of Internet (Gonzalez-Bailon et al., 2014). Sometime recently, most data was recovered through asynchronous  (letters or books) and synchronous (face to face then again phone discussions) interactions using the Information and communication technology. These days, the information collection process became more twisted whereby information  is turning out to be more available through the World Wide Web and it is assuming a greater part in the decision making process of different individuals (Salemink et al., 2014).

Well known web internet searchers, for example, Google and Bing are serving a huge number of clients and billions of hunt inquiries every day. In this manner, the association between the client and the WSE programming is both essential and delicate (Yang et al., 2014). What the client inserts in to the search box (i.e. the inquiry question) straightforwardly in influences the web search engine result page (SERP) and thus the clients post search believe.

Query string recommendations and related search models help WSE clients to find their required information in a quicker manner (Gerpott & Thomas, 2014). It is regularly that clients pick one of the recommended inquiries as their inquiry string. Query definition and confirmation bias are interlaced in more than one way. A user with the expectation to corm their conviction about a specific point tends to plan their inquiry in a way that would trigger a preened reply (Fforde, 2016).

In their review, they researched whether the basic components for particular presentation to data are in- influenced by cautious or exactness thought processes. They closed that those with some earlier learning about a given subject tended to incline towards amicable data (steady of member’s previous convictions), while the nonattendance of prior knowledge demonstrated a more grounded tolerance towards uncongenial data driven by exactness reasons in scan for right arrangements (Favero & Bullock, 2015).

Both confirmation bias  and source validity assumed as the vital parts when it comes to online search for the information, as results pages usually give messages a differing qualities of points of view and mastery, all centred around a solitary point or pursuit term. Query items are maybe interesting in the degree to which they can highlight contrasting perspectives on a political issue and require basic leadership on the part of the data buyer (Gazzaniga & Heatherton, 2015). This presentation is rather than that of a common news outlet or data source giving substance assorted qualities of points however restricted scope of viewpoints. Search engine customers outcomes are hence a squeezing setting in which to look at particular presentation and its belongings (Knobloch?Westerwick & Johnson, 2014).

Biases can be viewed in data retrieval in circumstances where searchers look for or are given that altogether deviates from the real one and required one. There is small comprehension of the effect of such biases in the practical scenario (Ioannidis, 2014).

Confirmation bias happens when we lose our capacity to be objective. The reason that affirmation inclination is so normal is on the grounds that, rationally, it is less demanding to manage (Zhu & Huberman, 2014).. Investigations of social judgment demonstrate that when individuals are supportive of a specific conviction, they tend to search out proof and decipher data that takes after their convictions by giving positive proof more weight than it merits. Then again, they do not look for or even reject data that would negate their convictions by giving less weight to negative confirmation. This does not imply that we totally overlook negative data, yet it means that we give it less weight than positive data. This is normally proficient by forgetting, changing, or weakening any of the negative perceptions.

According to White, the web contains an inconceivable amount of unexploited material due to searcher’s slant for inclination steady data that is to state, specifically picking material on the web that satisfies their one-sided perspective of a given subject (White, 2013). They indicate by means of tests directed on the Google web search tool generous proof of presentation predisposition in snaps towards comes about with more appealing titles. Researchers like Ioannidis concentrated the impact of area predispositions, whereby an outcome is accepted to be more applicable in light of its source area (Ioannidis, 2014). They demonstrate that this predisposition exists in click practices and human judgments, and that space can flip inscription inclinations around a fourth of the time, autonomous of rank or importance. Be that as it may, these inclinations are inconsequential to one-sided convictions about errand results and the part of internet searchers in strengthening those convictions.

Despite the fact that exploration has been directed on the effects of confirmation bias on the web-search, the researchers Kassin, Dror & Kukucka (2013) demonstrates that confirmation bias assume a part while questioning assumptive and non-assumptive moves.

The outcomes from the different researchers highlight the significance of the confirmation bias on the online search for particular introduction, particularly given its interesting components and the immense dependence on and confide in internet searchers/users (Zhu & Huberman, 2014).

Searchers are attracted to data/information results supporting or affirming their earlier convictions (as recommended in overview comments) and are in this manner improbable to change their supposition as they are not presented to conflicting confirmation (Knobloch?Westerwick & Johnson, 2014). Web crawlers rank outcomes with yes higher in the rundown driving searchers to will probably see those outcomes, or the earlier circulation of right responses to the yes-no inquiries submitted to web crawlers is skewed positive (Muchnik, Aral & Taylor, 2013).

Conclusion:

The whole essay focused on only Confirmation bias. It can be said that most of the people are unaware of the fact that they are inclined towards a particular thing and they always tries to find out the things that they believe are the best. People are also unaware of the fact that their biasness often leads to real changes in the society leaving behind many things that are left used, unexplored and unnoticed. Human psychology is a very complex thing. No single theory can be used to interpret the human psychology as whatever is applicable on one person may not be applicable on other persons. Hence, researchers should focus more on the different kind of biases with special attention to confirmation bias. As seen in this essay that this notion of people also affects the way in which they uses internet, it can be wrapped up by connoting that the this incident has huge impact on their life. Researchers should focus on the ways in which each individual reacts and shows their inclination towards a particular thing. Also while conducting the research it is very important to keep check of the fact that the researcher themselves has to be unbiased people or else their research result is going to be fallacious as well. The essay can be ended up by saying that more empirical research is required in this topic whereby the empirics should be collected from people belonging to different classes in the society so that a relation on human behaviour can be established based on the ways in which it differs between the stratums of the society.

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