Editing Confirmation bias (section)

=== Preference for early information ===
Experiments have shown that information is weighted more strongly when it appears early in a series, even when the order is unimportant. For example, people form a more positive impression of someone described as "intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious" than when they are given the same words in reverse order.<ref name="baron197">{{Harvnb|Baron|2000|pp=197–200}}</ref> This ''irrational primacy effect'' is independent of the [[serial position effect|primacy effect in memory]] in which the earlier items in a series leave a stronger memory trace.<ref name="baron197"/> Biased interpretation offers an explanation for this effect: seeing the initial evidence, people form a working hypothesis that affects how they interpret the rest of the information.<ref name ="nickerson"/>{{rp|187}}

One demonstration of irrational primacy used colored chips supposedly drawn from two urns. Participants were told the color distributions of the urns, and had to estimate the probability of a chip being drawn from one of them.<ref name="baron197"/> In fact, the colors appeared in a prearranged order. The first thirty draws favored one urn and the next thirty favored the other.<ref name ="nickerson"/>{{rp|187}} The series as a whole was neutral, so rationally, the two urns were equally likely. However, after sixty draws, participants favored the urn suggested by the initial thirty.<ref name="baron197" />

Another experiment involved a slide show of a single object, seen as just a blur at first and in slightly better focus with each succeeding slide.<ref name="baron197"/> After each slide, participants had to state their best guess of what the object was. Participants whose early guesses were wrong persisted with those guesses, even when the picture was sufficiently in focus that the object was readily recognizable to other people.<ref name ="nickerson"/>{{rp|187}}