How Did Confirmation Bias Evolve?

Mr. Scott said:
That was a quotation of Dr. Weston himself. The key phrase for me is "massively reinforced" behavior of exercizing one's bias.
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I looked that up, and thank you for the clarity.

It is from an article in the New York Times, hardly a citation that demonstrates the evidence for how it stimulates the pleasure centers.

More like a catchy sound byte.
 
Mr. Scott said:
I didn't ignore the request, just had too little time for JREF until now. I relocated the smoking gun that links confirmation bias with drug addiction-like psychology. Here's a quote and links:



2007 Confirmation Bias (Repost from AMNAP 1.0)
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Sorry this is blog and not the research article, I will read it but you know what thier headline is "Observations and experiments casting doubt on the model of reductionistic materialism"

farther down
"Is it true that skeptics of psi phenomena are being irrational about the facts?"

and further
"This definitely adds support to the charge that "scientific" opposition to psi phenomena is more about sociology than science."

Certainly good for entertainment but not as a citation source.

I will read it but this is not a research article.
Emory Study Lights Up The Political Brain
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quote from Westen in quote marks:


says Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory who led the study. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts." Westen and his colleagues will present their findings at the Annual Conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Jan. 28.
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this is not a direct quote of westen but a paraphrase:

not only did circuits that mediate negative emotions like sadness and disgust turn off, but subjects got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward -- similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix, Westen explains.
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This is what the article says about the research
While reasoning about apparent contradictions for their own candidate, partisans showed activations throughout the orbital frontal cortex, indicating emotional processing and presumably emotion regulation strategies. There also were activations in areas of the brain associated with the experience of unpleasant emotions, the processing of emotion and conflict, and judgments of forgiveness and moral accountability.

Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning (as well as conscious efforts to suppress emotion). The finding suggests that the emotion-driven processes that lead to biased judgments likely occur outside of awareness, and are distinct from normal reasoning processes when emotion is not so heavily engaged, says Westen
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And the whole point to this is that there is still not a citation for the confirmation bias stimulating the pleasure centers of the brain.

Sorry.
:)
 
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It seems that the real issue is the nature of perception, until people understand that the brain searches for patterns, creates patterns and manufactures patterns, we will have vauge gobbledy gook.
 
This statement has no research citation to back it, we can't evlauate the evidence because it has not been presented.

ignoring evidence against a belief one firmly holds stimulates the same pleasure centers as addictive drugs
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Please give us the data or the sources for the data?

So far we have Westen saying 'similar to' and that is it.

:)
 
Wow what a great article!

i read it very briefly, the protocol and data gathering are very cool and seem well structured, the data was gathered from 30 men who were recruited for thier partisanship.

These are the relevant quotes I found at the end.

The large activation of the ventral striatum that followed the subjects’ processing of threatening information likely reflects reward or relief engendered by “successful” equilibrium to an emotionally stable judgment. The combination of reduced negative affect (absence of activity in the insula and lateral orbital cortex) and the increased positive affect or reward (ventral striatum activation) once subjects had ample time to reach biased conclusions suggests why motivated judgments may be so difficult to change (i.e., they are doubly reinforcing).
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Of potential relevance several researchers have found avoidance and escape conditioning to be associated with dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens and dorsal straitum in other animals.
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So far there is no data in this article to state that the confirmation bias is something that creates a positive reinforcement of the type addicts experiece. we have reinforcement of both positive and the negative sort.

But no stimulation of the pleasure centers.

I think 'massive reinforcement' is a sound byte.
 
Just in case nobody had thought of this yet, confirmation bias is a very good reason to be a skeptic. One of its effects is that we can't really trust our own experiences. My experience may tell me that bee pollen always cures my sore throat, but that may just be confirmation bias.

Here's a post that elaborates on that point.
 
Thanks for the Discussion

Dancing David said:
I think 'massive reinforcement' is a sound byte.
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Does that make it false? Dancing David, your conduct in this thread seems to exemplify confirmation bias.

This may be my last posting in this thread, although I'll likely keep reading it until it peters out. Confirmation bias is certainly one of the most important of psychological phenomena affecting skepticism.

Thanks, everyone, for your input.
 
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I've been mulling it over, and something is happening inside of peoples brains that is connected to that overwhelming feeling of "being right", either in a religious way, or in politics, even science or gaming. I believe "knowing without a doubt you are 100% right" triggers reward mechanisms in the brain, even if you are deluded.

The classic observation,"Religion is the opiate of the masses" was an astute statement on the phenomenom of "Faith" or belief that ignores any and all evidence or reasoning to the contrary. It does seem to create a positive feedback loop, reinforcing behavior or thoughts, no matter what anyone says or does.

As was pointed out, it could explain the unreasonable amount of time and energy people spend fighting over ideas, concepts, facts, opinions, whatever, in which the level of participation does seem to equal drug use. A good flame war can be like a crack run, even when it is over a Video game, or an episode of Star Trek from 1966.

Is this the same thing as confirmation bias? Or is this something else?
 
blutoski said:
Nope. It's the way you try to confirm your hypothesis by seeking a confirmation, instead of seeking disconfirmation.

Hypothesis: crows are black

Strategy: look for black crows

Fact: I found a 100 black crows

Conclusion: crows are black

This is confirmation bias.
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Hypothesis: Us humans are amazing thinking machines, who search for and find truth.

Strategy: Marvel at our bodies of knowledge, like, erm... wikipedia!

Fact: I found this vast list of cognitive biases.

Conclusion: We're a bloody mess.
 
Mr. Scott said:
This may be my last posting in this thread, although I'll likely keep reading it until it peters out. Confirmation bias is certainly one of the most important of psychological phenomena affecting skepticism.
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I agree. I just think that you've yet to prove that it is something that affects reproductive success. Until you can do that, coming up with theories as to how CB evolved--speculating about stimulating pleasure centers when you "confirm" that you are right, for instance--is premature.

Again, is it valid to ask how pareidolia evolved? (Unless the answer you want is that it is a byproduct of something else that was selected for or just something that was never selected against.)
 
Mr. Scott said:
Does that make it false? Dancing David, your conduct in this thread seems to exemplify confirmation bias.

This may be my last posting in this thread, although I'll likely keep reading it until it peters out. Confirmation bias is certainly one of the most important of psychological phenomena affecting skepticism.

Thanks, everyone, for your input.
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And there is no evidence for the claim that confirmation bias "causes stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain."

That is not confirmation bias, just unsupported assertion on your part.

Did I say that it was false? I stated that it was a soundbyte and that it is unsupported by the paper the Westen wrote.

Funny how the actual discussion of the evolutionary development of things that might support confirmation bias was ignored by certain people.
 
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Allow me to bump this thread with a recent news article that makes headway in answering the question in the OP. Capuchin monkeys exhibit Cognitive Dissonance/ Confirmation Bias / Rationalization.

Some psychologists postulate that rationalization is a type of defense mechanism, a mental process that lowers stress by expunging thoughts that might otherwise threaten our self-esteem.
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Well, I read that article snipett, uh, there are very strong reasons that a biological bias could exist towards excluding a food choice of a certain color.

there are many mechanism where that could happen. I think further testing would be needed to decide what factors inflence the choice.
 
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