Primary error detection and minimization (PEDMIN) strategies in social cognition: A reinterpretation of confirmation bias phenomena.

Abstract

A broad empirical literature demonstrates what has been termed a confirmation bias or positive test strategy heuristic in reasoning (Klayman & Ha, 1987), a potentially maladaptive pattern of data preferences that coexists with more normative preferences for highly diagnostic information (Skov & Sherman, 1986). A model is developed to account for these variations in test strategies, beginning with the premise that cognitive processes are adapted to reducing particularly costly errors rather than to detecting "truth" (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992). By specifying the information required to minimize various errors of primary concern, the model clarifies the adaptiveness of certain confirmatory preferences, identifies conditions under which such preferences should diminish, and outlines how error minimization goals might produce data preferences coincidentally consistent with normative prescriptions.

Post-decisional accounts of biases in confidence

“…For example, people may hang on to beliefs that are categorically wrong to minimise cognitive dissonance [46], even in the light of overwhelming evidence against them [47]. Yet another explanation argues that decisionmakers are pragmatic, and that confirmation bias might be optimal in certain real-life scenarios [43]. According to this view, humans might not be so concerned about determining the veracity of different hypothesis as they are about minimising the odds of making a costly mistake.…”

“…According to this view, humans might not be so concerned about determining the veracity of different hypothesis as they are about minimising the odds of making a costly mistake. If the negative consequences of assuming that a particular hypothesis is false are larger than the positive ones associated with accepting it as true, then the strategy that maximises reward would also exhibit a confirmation bias (see [43] and [44] for real-life examples of this situation).…”

“…Confirmation biases could also be a consequence of finite cognitive resources which results in the use of heuristics [43,44]. One proposal posits that humans can contemplate only one hypothesis at a time, and that they implement a "positive-test strategy" [45].…”

Behavioral Criminal Law and Economics

“…Nickerson (1998);Friedrich (1993); Simon et al (2001). This bias makes police errors more likely, as police continue to focus attention on their initial suspect even when a rational observer would find new evidence or interpret old evidence to suggest the suspect's innocence.…”

Self-deception and the selectivity problem

“…While condition 6 captures the intuition that self-deception requires mistaken higherorder thought about the causes of one's own cognitive activities (see Mele 2012, 10-12). I am mentioning these In order to make his account more empirically adequate, Mele (1997Mele ( , 2001 relies on an empirical model of everyday hypothesis testing, developed by the psychologists Friedrich (1993), and Trope & Liberman (1996). The idea behind the FTL model 4 is succinctly summarized by Bermúdez (see also Mele 2012):…”