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What is confirmation bias? What is the confirmation bias definition, and what are some clear confirmation bias examples?
Confirmation bias is the tendency to only see the evidence that confirms the beliefs you already hold. We select evidence on the basis of preconceived frameworks, biases, or hypotheses.
We’ll cover how confirmation bias occurs and why it means that “experts” often aren’t experts at all.
What Is Confirmation Bias Theory?
All too often we draw universal conclusions from a particular set of facts. For example, if we were presented with evidence that showed a turkey had been fed and housed for 1,000 straight days, we would likely predict the same for day 1,001 and for day 1,100.
Taleb calls this prediction the “round-trip fallacy.” When we commit the round-trip fallacy, we assume that “no evidence of x”—where x is any event or phenomenon—is the same as “evidence of no x.”
For example, in the turkey illustration, we might assume that “no evidence of the possibility of slaughter” equals “evidence of the impossibility of slaughter.” To take a medical example, if a cancer screening comes back negative, there is “no evidence of cancer,” not “evidence of no cancer” (because the scan isn’t perfect and could have missed something).
What is confirmation bias? In addition to drawing broad conclusions from narrow observations, we also have a tendency to select evidence on the basis of preconceived frameworks, biases, or hypotheses. This is a confirmation bias definition. For example, a scientist conducting an experiment may, often unconsciously, discount evidence that disconfirms her hypothesis in favor of the evidence that confirms it. Taleb calls this habit “naive empiricism,” but it’s more commonly known as “confirmation bias.”
Taleb’s solution to naive empiricism/confirmation bias is negative empiricism—the rigorous search for disconfirming, rather than corroborating, evidence. This technique was pioneered by a philosopher of science named Karl Popper, who called it “falsification.” The reason negative empiricism/falsification is so effective is that we can be far more sure of wrong answers than right ones.
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- Why world-changing events are unpredictable, and how to deal with them
- Why you can't trust experts, especially the confident ones
- The best investment strategy to take advantage of black swants
