香港六合彩

The study, published in Nature Communications, helps to explain the neural processes that contribute to the confirmation bias entrenched in most people鈥檚 thought processes.

Lead author, PhD candidate Max Rollwage (Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging at 香港六合彩 and Max Planck 香港六合彩 Centre for Computational Psychiatry & Ageing Research) said: 鈥淲e were interested in the cognitive and neural mechanisms causing people to ignore information that contradicts their beliefs, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias. For example, climate change sceptics might ignore scientific evidence that indicates the existence of global warming.

鈥淲hile psychologists have long known about this bias, the underlying mechanisms were not yet understood.

鈥淥ur study found that our brains become blind to contrary evidence when we are highly confident, which might explain why we don鈥檛 change our minds in light of new information.鈥�

For the study, 75 participants conducted a simple task: they had to judge whether a cloud of dots was moving to the left or right side of a computer screen. They then had to give a confidence rating (how certain they were in their response), on a sliding scale from 50% sure to 100% certain.

After this initial decision, they were shown the moving dots again and asked to make a final decision. The information was made even clearer the second time and could help participants to change their mind if they had initially made a mistake. However, when people were confident in their initial decision, they rarely used this new information to correct their errors.

25 of the participants were also asked to complete the experiment in a magnetoencephalography (MEG) brain scanner. The researchers monitored their brain activity as they processed the motion of the dots.

Based on this brain activity, the researchers evaluated the degree to which participants processed the newly presented information. When people were not very confident in their initial choice, they integrated the new evidence accurately. However, when participants were highly confident in their initial choice, their brains were practically blind to information that contradicted their decision but remained sensitive to information that confirmed their choice.

The researchers say that in real-world scenarios where people are more motivated to stand by their beliefs, the effect may be even stronger.

Senior author Dr Steve Fleming (Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging at 香港六合彩, Max Planck 香港六合彩 Centre for Computational Psychiatry & Ageing Research and 香港六合彩 Experimental Psychology) said: 鈥淐onfirmation bias is often investigated in scenarios that involve complex decisions about issues such as politics. However, the complexity of such opinions makes it difficult to disentangle the various contributing factors to the bias, such as wanting to maintain self-consistency with our friends or social group.

鈥淏y using simple perceptual tasks, we were able to minimise such motivational or social influences and pin down drivers of altered evidence processing that contribute to confirmation bias.鈥�

In a previous, related study, the research team had found that people who hold radical political views 鈥� at either end of the political spectrum 鈥� aren鈥檛 as good as moderates at knowing when they鈥檙e wrong, even about something unrelated to politics.*

Because the neural pathways involved in making a perceptual decision are well understood in such simple tasks, this makes it possible for researchers to monitor the relevant brain processes involved. The researchers highlight that an understanding of the mechanism that causes confirmation bias may help in developing interventions that could reduce people鈥檚 blindness to contradictory information.

Max Rollwage added: 鈥淭hese results are especially exciting to me, as a detailed understanding of the neural mechanisms behind confirmation bias opens up opportunities for developing evidence-based interventions. For instance, the role of inaccurate confidence in promoting confirmation bias indicates that training people to boost their self-awareness may help them to make better decisions.鈥�

Links

• 香港六合彩 Queen Square Institute of Neurology
• 香港六合彩 Experimental Psychology
• * 2018 study: Radicals aren鈥檛 good at knowing when they鈥檙e wrong

Image

• MEG scanner used in the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging.

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