Sources
https://bigthink.com/thinking/the-voltage-effect/
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-asch-conformity-experiments-2794996
Everyone in the room was shown a picture with three lines of varying lengths, in which one line was very obviously longer than others. Each person in the room was asked to state out loud which was the longest line. After the early confederates all identified the wrong line, more than a third of the participants, on average, went along with the clearly incorrect answer; over the course of twelve trials a whopping 75 percent went along with the obviously wrong answer in at least one instance. In contrast, when no confederates were present to tempt them to hop on their bandwagon, virtually all subjects chose the correct answer—demonstrating just how easily our independent judgment can be subsumed by our desire to “fit in” or be “one of the pack.”
This isn’t really confirmational bias but it is a bias. And it’s particularly relevant to our view of News.
Another
Given the sequence 2, 4, 6, for example, they typically formed a hypothesis that the rule was even numbers. Then the participants would present other sequences of even numbers, and researchers would tell them whether or not those numbers conformed to the rule. Through this process, participants were tasked with determining whether their hypothesis was correct. After several correct tries the participants believed that they had discovered the rule. But in fact they hadn’t, because the rule was much simpler: increasing numbers.
The most interesting aspect of this study (and the many others like it) is that almost all subjects only tested number sequences that conformed to their personal hypothesis, and very few tried a number sequence that might disprove their hypothesis. Wason’s experiment demonstrated that most people, regardless of intelligence, fail to examine their hypotheses critically. Instead, they try only to confirm them by “fast thinking,” using quick heuristics, or mental shortcuts.
This is definitely confirmational bias and Ooooops. They would have gotten me … 10, 16, 26 (see the pattern?) I would not have tried decreasing or negative numbers :-). And I’m better than some. Do you read Al Jazeera? Or Tass? Maybe the South China Morning Post? or do you only read American or Western news.
BTW American Democratic news versus Republican news is still only Western news.
Best to you all.