Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It's very cool that political scientists are doing studies about this. From what I understand, cognitive science ID'd this a long time ago.

They call it, "confirmation bias." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias)

Framed in this post: "If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn’t"

The point by both cognitive scientists and political scientists is this determination to believe something is completely sincere, not about deliberate deceit or spinning (though that does occur, it's a different phenomenon ). Anything that disputes your view is seen as exceptional circumstances/ invisible. "Yeah, but that's an edge case," "yeah but he went to Yale," "yeah, but she moved from France when she was 3."

We may even see it happening on our favorite news aggregator sites.

More reading (from cog sci perspective): http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/



People tend to draw patterns from single data points on what they believe and to call anecdote on pieces of real patterns for what they don't.

Your post is just an anecdote in my world. ;)




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: