Editing Confirmation bias (section)

=== Paranormal beliefs ===
One factor in the appeal of alleged [[psychic]] readings is that listeners apply a confirmation bias which fits the psychic's statements to their own lives.<ref name="toolkit">{{Citation |last=Smith |first= Jonathan C. |title=Pseudoscience and extraordinary claims of the paranormal: A critical thinker's toolkit |publisher=London: Wiley-Blackwell |year=2009 |pages=149–151 |isbn=978-1-4051-8122-8 |oclc=319499491}}</ref> By making a large number of ambiguous statements in each sitting, the psychic gives the client more opportunities to find a match. This is one of the techniques of [[cold reading]], with which a psychic can deliver a subjectively impressive reading without any prior information about the client.<ref name="toolkit" /> Investigator [[James Randi]] compared the transcript of a reading to the client's report of what the psychic had said, and found that the client showed a strong selective recall of the "hits".<ref>{{Citation |last=Randi |first=James |title=James Randi: Psychic investigator |publisher=London: Boxtree |year=1991 |isbn=978-1-85283-144-8 |oclc= 26359284 |pages=58–62}}</ref>

As a striking illustration of confirmation bias in the real world, Nickerson mentions numerological [[pyramidology]]: the practice of finding meaning in the proportions of the Egyptian pyramids.<ref name ="nickerson"/>{{rp|190}} There are many different length measurements that can be made of, for example, the [[Great Pyramid of Giza]] and many ways to combine or manipulate them. Hence it is almost inevitable that people who look at these numbers selectively will find superficially impressive correspondences, for example with the dimensions of the Earth.<ref name ="nickerson"/>{{rp|190}}