Belief bias 🙉
🧠 Psych - 49 / 100
Hello,
Today, we will be talking about the Belief bias 🙉. It’s a good one!
What is it?
The Belief-Bias Effect refers to the results that happen when an individual’s own values, beliefs, prior knowledge, etc. affects, or distorts, the reasoning process through the acceptance of invalid arguments or data.
Example -
It can happen when an observer assumes ahead of time that they know what the results of an experiment will be and uses that belief to distort the results.
Where does it occur?
An example of this could be an researcher studying the affect of prayer on illness.
A completely open-minded researcher will gather data and then come to a conclusion based purely on the data collected, while a highly religious person may interpret the data in favor of prayer as a factor in healing, while an atheist may discount pro-prayer data.
Why do I need to know?
Belief bias is most often assessed with syllogistic reasoning tasks in which the believability of the conclusion conflicts with logical validity.
Takeaways:-
The most successful way reduce belief bias is to get the person to imagine or explain how the opposite belief might be true. This de-biasing technique is known as counterexplanation.
References & Studies:-
https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Belief-Bias+Effect
http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social-cognition/belief-perseverance/
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