Biases in the Assimilation of Technological Breakdowns: Do Accidents Make Us Safer?

Abstract

Field surveys and anecdotal evidence suggest that supporters and opponents of a given technology tend to draw opposite conclusions from noncatastrophic breakdowns. Three studies confirmed this tendency by presenting supporters and opponents of a particular technology with identical descriptions of various tech nological breakdowns. As predicted, the results indicated that (a) supporters focused on the fact that the safeguards worked, while opponents focused on the fact that the breakdown occurred in the first place; and (b) after reading about the breakdown, supporters reported feeling that the chances of a catastrophic accident were less than previously assumed, whereas opponents reported feeling that the chances of an accident were greater than previously assumed. The recommenda tion by Lord, Lepper, and Preston (1984) for partisans to consider opposite out comes-such as a serious failure in safeguards or the absence of major breakdowns-was discussed as a way of preventing biased assimilation and at titude polarization.

Decision Confidence, Information Usefulness, and Information Seeking Intention in the Presence of Disconfirming Information

“…Evidence for the existence of the confirmatory bias phenomenon is supported in the psychology literature (Bruner & Potter, 1964;Darley & Gross, 1983;Haverkamp, 1993;Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979;Pious, 1991). Our study builds upon Khaneman and Tversky's (1972) seminal research on confirmation bias, extending it into the modern data visualizations that clients now commonly view in the 21 st -century informing environment.…”

Sexual Orientation Beliefs

“…Subsequent studies have investigated biased assimilation in domains such as AIDS prevention education (Slusher & Anderson, 1996), assessing the guilt of acused rape perpetrators (Weiner, Weiner, & Grisso, 1989), and the possibility of technological accidents (Plous, 1991). Miller, McHockey, Bane, and Dowd (1993) critiqued the original Lord et al (1979) study by demonstrating that the attitude polarization effect is limited to certain types of attitude assessment.…”

Bayesian Herders: Asymmetric Updating of Rainfall Beliefs in Response to External Forecasts

“…3 In struggling to reconcile existing beliefs with new information, people therefore tend to ignore new information altogether, a tendency called belief perseverance, or proactively to misread the new evidence as supportive of existing hypotheses, a tendency called confirmation bias (Darley and Gross 1983, Lord, et al 1979, Plous 1991, Rabin and Schrag 1999. Further evidence suggests that these cognitive biases become especially pronounced when the new information is genuinely ambiguous (Griffin andTversky 1992, Keren 1987), but fail to disappear even when a person has expertise and training Tversky 1982, Tversky andKahneman 1982).…”