Confirmation bias in information search, interpretation, and memory recall: evidence from reasoning about four controversial topics

Abstract

Confirmation bias is often used as an umbrella term for many related phenomena. Information searches, evidence interpretation, and memory recall are the three main components of the thinking process involved in hypothesis testing most relevant to investigations of confirmation bias; yet these have rarely been explored using a unified paradigm. Therefore, this paper examines how confirmation bias works in each of these three stages of reasoning, using four controversial topics. Participants (N = 199) first indicated their attitudes and then answered tasks measuring confirmation bias. The results showed that confirmation bias was most prevalent in information search as participants tended to search for information confirming their prior attitudes. During information interpretation, confirmation bias occurred only for more polarizing topics. On the other hand, our results did not show confirmation bias in memory recall, as there was no difference in recall of information confirming or disconfirming prior attitudes for any of the topics. Although our attitudes affect the way we process information, it seems the effect varies depending on the reasoning stage, and this can have implications for debiasing strategies.