Editing Bias (section)

====Confirmation bias====
[[File:Fred Barnard07.jpg|thumb|right|upright|alt=A drawing of a man sitting on a stool at a writing desk|Confirmation bias has been described as an internal "[[Wikt:yes man|yes man]]", echoing back a person's beliefs like [[Charles Dickens]]' character [[Uriah Heep (character)|Uriah Heep]].<ref name="WSJ">{{cite news |title=How to Ignore the Yes-Man in Your Head |first=Jason |last=Zweig |newspaper=Wall Street Journal |date=November 19, 2009 |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703811604574533680037778184 |access-date=2010-06-13 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150214052645/http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703811604574533680037778184 |archive-date=February 14, 2015 }}</ref>]]

{{Main|Confirmation bias}}

Confirmation bias is the tendency to [[Research|search for]], [[Evaluation|interpret]], favor, and [[recall (memory)|recall]] information in a way that confirms one's [[belief]]s or [[hypothesis|hypotheses]] while giving disproportionately less attention to information that contradicts it.<ref>{{cite book | last=Plous | first=Scott | title=The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making | url=https://archive.org/details/psychologyjudgme00plou_528 | url-access=limited | pages=[https://archive.org/details/psychologyjudgme00plou_528/page/n201 233] | date=1993| publisher=McGraw-Hill Education | isbn=9780070504776 }}</ref> The effect is stronger for [[emotion]]ally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain [[attitude polarization]] (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), [[Confirmation bias#Persistence of discredited beliefs|belief perseverance]] (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and [[illusory correlation]] (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations). Confirmation biases contribute to [[overconfidence effect|overconfidence]] in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor [[decision making|decisions]] due to these biases have been found in political and organizational contexts.<ref name=cbiaspolitics>{{cite journal|last=Nickerson|first=Raymond S.|title=Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises|journal=Review of General Psychology|date=June 1998|volume=2|issue=2|pages=175–220|doi=10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175|s2cid=8508954}}</ref><ref>[[Barbara W. Tuchman|Tuchman, Barbara]] (1984). ''The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam''. New York: Knopf.</ref>