Abstract
Confirmation bias is one of the most widely discussed epistemically problematic cognitions, challenging reliable belief formation and the correction of inaccurate views. Given its problematic nature, it remains unclear why the bias evolved and is still with us today. To offer an explanation, several philosophers and scientists have argued that the bias is in fact adaptive. I critically discuss three recent proposals of this kind before developing a novel alternative, what I call the ‘reality-matching account’. According to the account, confirmation bias evolved because it helps us influence people and social structures so that they come to match our beliefs about them. This can result in significant developmental and epistemic benefits for us and other people, ensuring that over time we don’t become epistemically disconnected from social reality but can navigate it more easily. While that might not be the only evolved function of confirmation bias, it is an important one that has so far been neglected in the theorizing on the bias.
Highlights
Confirmation Bias and FriendsThe term ‘confirmation bias’ has been used to refer to various distinct ways in which beliefs and expectations can influence the selection, retention, and evaluation of evidence (Klayman 1995; Nickerson 1998). Hahn and Harris (2014) offer a list of them including four types of cognitions: (1) hypothesis-determined information seeking and interpretation, (2) failures to pursue a falsificationist strategy in contexts of conditional reasoning, (3) a resistance to change a belief or opinion once formed, and (4) overconfidence or an illusion of validity of one’s own view
In recent years, confirmation bias,1 that is, people’s tendency to search for information that supports their beliefs and ignore or distort data contradicting them (Nickerson 1998; Myers and DeWall 2015: 357), has frequently been discussed in the media, the sciences, and philosophy
I shall contend that a confirmation bias pertaining to social beliefs reinforces our confidence in these beliefs, therewith strengthening our tendency to behave in ways that cause changes in reality so that it corresponds to the beliefs, turning them into self-fulfilling prophecies (SFPs) (Merton 1948; Biggs 2009)
Summary
The term ‘confirmation bias’ has been used to refer to various distinct ways in which beliefs and expectations can influence the selection, retention, and evaluation of evidence (Klayman 1995; Nickerson 1998). Hahn and Harris (2014) offer a list of them including four types of cognitions: (1) hypothesis-determined information seeking and interpretation, (2) failures to pursue a falsificationist strategy in contexts of conditional reasoning, (3) a resistance to change a belief or opinion once formed, and (4) overconfidence or an illusion of validity of one’s own view. Hahn and Harries note that while all of these cognitions have been labeled ‘confirmation bias’, (1)–(4) are sometimes viewed as components of ‘motivated reasoning’ (or ‘wishful thinking’) (ibid: 45), i.e., information processing that leads people to arrive at the conclusions they favor (Kunda 1990). Unmotivated confirmation bias, operates when people process data in one-sided, partial ways that support their predetermined views no matter whether they favor them. Confirmation bias is importantly different from motivated reasoning, as it can take effect in the absence of a preferred view and might lead one to support even beliefs that one wants to be false (e.g., when one believes the catastrophic effects of climate change are unavoidable; Steel 2018). I here endorse this standard, functional concept of confirmation bias
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