Confirmation bias with motivated beliefs

Charness, Gary; Dave, Chetan

doi:10.1016/j.geb.2017.02.015

Cited by 101 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…More generally, Benjamin (2019) points out that the evidence in this nascent literature is so far very mixed. In the economics literature, three papers find evidence in favor of stronger inference from good news: Eil and Rao (2011), Möbius et al (2014) and Charness and Dave (2017). 18 In contrast, there are three papers that find evidence of stronger inference from bad news: Ertac 2011, Kuhnen (2015) and Coutts (2019).…”

Section: Heterogeneous Results Observed In the Asymmetric Updating LImentioning

confidence: 99%

Belief updating: does the ‘good-news, bad-news’ asymmetry extend to purely financial domains?

Barron

2020

Exp Econ

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Bayes' statistical rule remains the status quo for modeling belief updating in both normative and descriptive models of behavior under uncertainty. Some recent research has questioned the use of Bayes' rule in descriptive models of behavior, presenting evidence that people overweight 'good news' relative to 'bad news' when updating ego-relevant beliefs. In this paper, we present experimental evidence testing whether this 'good-news, bad-news' effect is present in a financial decision making context (i.e. a domain that is important for understanding much economic decision making). We find no evidence of asymmetric updating in this domain. In contrast, in our experiment, belief updating is close to the Bayesian benchmark on average. However, we show that this average behavior masks substantial heterogeneity in individual updating behavior. We find no evidence in support of a sizeable subgroup of asymmetric updators.

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Section: Heterogeneous Results Observed In the Asymmetric Updating LImentioning

confidence: 99%

Belief updating: does the ‘good-news, bad-news’ asymmetry extend to purely financial domains?

Barron

2020

Exp Econ

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“…Both Möbius et al and Barron found that their IV results are similar to their OLS results, but the estimates for equation (4.21) from other papers should interpreted with the caveat that they do not address (a) and (b). 44 These papers are Grether (1992), Möbius et al (2007Möbius et al ( / 2014, Holt and Smith (2009), Barron (2016), Charness and Dave (2017), Coutts (2017), Gotthard-Real (2017), and Buser, Gerhards, and van der Weele (2018). The analysis yielding the numbers reported in this paragraph are described in the Online Appendix to this chapter.…”

Section: B Evidence From Simultaneous Samplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, as in Charness and Dave (2017) 63 , I describe the bias as a discrete difference in the amount by which beliefs are updated depending on whether the signal is confirming or disconfirming 64 :…”

Section: A Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Errors in Probabilistic Reasoning and Judgment Biases

Benjamin

2018

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Errors in probabilistic reasoning have been the focus of much psychology research and are among the original topics of modern behavioral economics. This chapter reviews theory and evidence on this topic, with the goal of facilitating more systematic study of belief biases and their integration into economics. The chapter discusses biases in beliefs about random processes, biases in belief updating, the representativeness heuristic as a possible unifying theory, and interactions between biased belief updating and other features of the updating situation. Throughout, I aim to convey how much evidence there is for (and against) each putative bias, and I highlight when and how different biases may be related to each other. The chapter ends by drawing general lessons for when people update too much or too little, reflecting on modeling challenges, pointing to areas of economics to which the biases are relevant, and highlighting some possible directions for future work.

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“…Various brain areas have been implicated in this monitoring function, such as the anterior cingulate cortex and the posterior parietal cortex (O'Reilly et al, 2013). Based on this research, it appears that people do not update their beliefs in a fully rational, Bayesian, manner, and often do so insufficiently, giving rise to the confirmation bias (Charness & Dave, 2017).…”

Section: Physiological Responses To Belief-violating Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 94%

Confirmation bias and misconceptions: Pupillometric evidence for a confirmation bias in misconceptions feedback

Sleegers

Proulx

Beest

2019

Biological Psychology

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Word count: 5136 PUPILLARY RESPONSE TO FEEDBACK ABOUT MISCONCEPTIONS ! 2 Abstract It has long been supposed that the confirmation bias plays a role in the prevalence and maintenance of misconceptions. However, this has been supported more by argument than by empirical evidence. In the present paper, we show how different types of belief-feedback evoke physiological responses consistent with the presence of a confirmation bias. Participants were presented with misconceptions and indicated whether they believed each misconception to be true or false, as well as how committed they were to the misconception. Each response was followed by feedback that was either clear (i.e., "correct" or "incorrect") or ambiguous (i.e., "partly correct" or "partly incorrect"). Pupillary response to each feedback condition was assessed. The results show an interaction between feedback accuracy and feedback clarity on pupil size. The largest pupil size was found in response to clear disconfirmatory feedback. The smallest pupil size was found in response to both clear and ambiguous confirmatory feedback. Crucially, the pupil responded to ambiguous confirmatory feedback as though it were wholly confirmatory. Moreover, pupil size in response to ambiguous disconfirmatory feedback was significantly smaller than response to clear disconfirmatory feedback, showing an overall trend towards confirmatory processing in the absence of clear disconfirmation. Additionally, we show a moderation by commitment towards the misconception. The greater the commitment, the larger the effect of belief-violating feedback on pupil size. These findings support recent theorizing in the field of misconceptions and, more generally, the field of inconsistency-compensation.

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Confirmation bias with motivated beliefs

Cited by 101 publications

References 20 publications

Belief updating: does the ‘good-news, bad-news’ asymmetry extend to purely financial domains?

Belief updating: does the ‘good-news, bad-news’ asymmetry extend to purely financial domains?

Errors in Probabilistic Reasoning and Judgment Biases

Confirmation bias and misconceptions: Pupillometric evidence for a confirmation bias in misconceptions feedback

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