Would a confirmation dialog before counting a vote be useful? I've actually clicked on the wrong button more than once when voting?

However, if the external parties are overly aggressive or critical, people will disengage from thought altogether, and simply assert their personal opinions without justification. 83 Lerner and Tetlock say that people only push themselves to think critically and logically when they know in advance they will need to explain themselves to others who are well-informed, genuinely interested in the truth, and whose views they don't already know. 84 Because those conditions rarely exist, they argue, most people are using confirmatory thought most of the time.

Confirmation bias can lead investors to be overconfident, ignoring evidence that their strategies will lose money. 486 In studies of political stock markets, investors made more profit when they resisted bias. For example, participants who interpreted a candidate's debate performance in a neutral rather than partisan way were more likely to profit.

87 To combat the effect of confirmation bias, investors can try to adopt a contrary viewpoint "for the sake of argument". 88 In one technique, they imagine that their investments have collapsed and ask themselves why this might happen. Raymond Nickerson, a psychologist, blames confirmation bias for the ineffective medical procedures that were used for centuries before the arrival of scientific medicine.

89 If a patient recovered, medical authorities counted the treatment as successful, rather than looking for alternative explanations such as that the disease had run its natural course. 89 Biased assimilation is a factor in the modern appeal of alternative medicine, whose proponents are swayed by positive anecdotal evidence but treat scientific evidence hyper-critically. Cognitive therapy was developed by Aaron T.

Beck in the early 1960s and has become a popular approach. 93 According to Beck, biased information processing is a factor in depression. 94 His approach teaches people to treat evidence impartially, rather than selectively reinforcing negative outlooks.

50 Phobias and hypochondria have also been shown to involve confirmation bias for threatening information. Nickerson argues that reasoning in judicial and political contexts is sometimes subconsciously biased, favoring conclusions that judges, juries or governments have already committed to. 96 Since the evidence in a jury trial can be complex, and jurors often reach decisions about the verdict early on, it is reasonable to expect an attitude polarization effect.

The prediction that jurors will become more extreme in their views as they see more evidence has been borne out in experiments with mock trials. 9798 Both inquisitorial and adversarial criminal justice systems are affected by confirmation bias. Confirmation bias can be a factor in creating or extending conflicts, from emotionally charged debates to wars: by interpreting the evidence in their favor, each opposing party can become overconfident that it is in the stronger position.

100 On the other hand, confirmation bias can result in people ignoring or misinterpreting the signs of an imminent or incipient conflict. For example, psychologists Stuart Sutherland and Thomas Kida have each argued that US Admiral Husband E. Kimmel showed confirmation bias when playing down the first signs of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

A two-decade study of political pundits by Philip E. Tetlock found that, on the whole, their predictions were not much better than chance. Tetlock divided experts into "foxes" who maintained multiple hypotheses, and "hedgehogs" who were more dogmatic.

In general, the hedgehogs were much less accurate. Tetlock blamed their failure on confirmation bias—specifically, their inability to make use of new information that contradicted their existing theories. One factor in the appeal of psychic "readings" is that listeners apply a confirmation bias which fits the psychic's statements to their own lives.

103 By making a large number of ambiguous statements in each sitting, the psychic gives the client more opportunities to find a match. This is one of the techniques of cold reading, with which a psychic can deliver a subjectively impressive reading without any prior information about the client. 103 Investigator James Randi compared the transcript of a reading to the client's report of what the psychic had said, and found that the client showed a strong selective recall of the "hits".

As a striking illustration of confirmation bias in the real world, Nickerson mentions numerological pyramidology: the practice of finding meaning in the proportions of the Egyptian pyramids. 105 There are many different length measurements that can be made of, for example, the Great Pyramid of Giza and many ways to combine or manipulate them. Hence it is almost inevitable that people who look at these numbers selectively will find superficially impressive correspondences, for example with the dimensions of the Earth.

A distinguishing feature of scientific thinking is the search for falsifying as well as confirming evidence. 106 However, many times in the history of science, scientists have resisted new discoveries by selectively interpreting or ignoring unfavorable data. 106 Previous research has shown that the assessment of the quality of scientific studies seems to be particularly vulnerable to confirmation bias.

It has been found several times that scientists rate studies that report findings consistent with their prior beliefs more favorably than studies reporting findings inconsistent with their previous beliefs. 67107108 However, assuming that the research question is relevant, the experimental design adequate and the data are clearly and comprehensively described, the found results should be of importance to the scientific community and should not be viewed prejudicially, regardless of whether they conform to current theoretical predictions. Confirmation bias may thus be especially harmful to objective evaluations regarding nonconforming results since biased individuals may regard opposing evidence to be weak in principle and give little serious thought to revising their beliefs.

107 Scientific innovators often meet with resistance from the scientific community, and research presenting controversial results frequently receives harsh peer review. In the context of scientific research, confirmation biases can sustain theories or research programs in the face of inadequate or even contradictory evidence;61110 the field of parapsychology has been particularly affected. An experimenter's confirmation bias can potentially affect which data are reported.

Data that conflict with the experimenter's expectations may be more readily discarded as unreliable, producing the so-called file drawer effect. To combat this tendency, scientific training teaches ways to prevent bias. 112 For example, experimental design of randomized controlled trials (coupled with their systematic review) aims to minimize sources of bias.

112113 The social process of peer review is thought to mitigate the effect of individual scientists' biases,114 even though the peer review process itself may be susceptible to such biases. Social psychologists have identified two tendencies in the way people seek or interpret information about themselves. Self-verification is the drive to reinforce the existing self-image and self-enhancement is the drive to seek positive feedback.

Both are served by confirmation biases. 116 In experiments where people are given feedback that conflicts with their self-image, they are less likely to attend to it or remember it than when given self-verifying feedback. 117118119 They reduce the impact of such information by interpreting it as unreliable.

117120121 Similar experiments have found a preference for positive feedback, and the people who give it, over negative feedback. Skeptic's Dictionary: confirmation bias by Robert T. Teaching about confirmation bias, class handout and instructor's notes by K.