Toward Parsimony in Bias Research: A Proposed Common Framework of Belief-Consistent Information Processing for a Set of Biases

Abstract

One of the essential insights from psychological research is that people’s information processing is often biased. By now, a number of different biases have been identified and empirically demonstrated. Unfortunately, however, these biases have often been examined in separate lines of research, thereby precluding the recognition of shared principles. Here we argue that several—so far mostly unrelated—biases (e.g., bias blind spot, hostile media bias, egocentric/ethnocentric bias, outcome bias) can be traced back to the combination of a fundamental prior belief and humans’ tendency toward belief-consistent information processing. What varies between different biases is essentially the specific belief that guides information processing. More importantly, we propose that different biases even share the same underlying belief and differ only in the specific outcome of information processing that is assessed (i.e., the dependent variable), thus tapping into different manifestations of the same latent information processing. In other words, we propose for discussion a model that suffices to explain several different biases. We thereby suggest a more parsimonious approach compared with current theoretical explanations of these biases. We also generate novel hypotheses that follow directly from the integrative nature of our perspective.

On the Usefulness of the Conspiracy Mentality Concept

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When “Sometimes” Means “Often”: How Stereotypes Affect Interpretations of Quantitative Expressions

“…Research on the confirmation bias has shown how people's patterns of search, evaluation, weighting and interpretation of evidence are systematically biased in the direction of their expectations, hypotheses and beliefs. Thus, people tend to give a stronger weight to information that is supportive (vs. contradictory) of their beliefs (Nickerson, 1998;Oeberst & Imhoff, 2023). Our studies show that, regardless of speakers' communicative intentions, recipient interpretations of statements about individuals can be driven by stereotypic expectations that, by definition, do not apply to all individual cases.…”

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