Basic research on expectancy effects suggests that investigative interviewers with pre-conceived notions about a crime may negatively influence the interview process in meaningful ways, yet many interviewing protocols recommend that interviewers review all available information prior to conducting their interviews. Previous research suggests that interviewers with no pre-interview knowledge elicit more detailed and accurate accounts than their informed counterparts (Cantlon, et al., 1996; Rivard et al., under review). The current study investigated whether (a) the benefit of blind versus informed interviewing is moderated by cautionary interviewer instructions to avoid suggestive questions and (b) whether any possible effects of pre-interview information extend beyond the immediate context of the forensic interview. Paired participants (N = 584) were assigned randomly either to the role of interviewer or witness. Witnesses viewed a mock crime video and were interviewed one week later by an interviewer who received either correct, incorrect, or no information about the crime event. Half of the interviewers were assigned randomly to receive additional instructions to avoid suggestive questions. All participants returned 1 week after the interview to recall the crime video (for the witness) or the information recalled by the witness during the interview (for the interviewer). All interviews and delayed recall measures were scored for the quantity and accuracy of information reported. Results replicate earlier findings that blind interviewers elicit more information from witnesses, without a decrease in accuracy rate. However instructions to avoid suggestive questions did not moderate the effect of blind versus informed interviewing on witness recall during the interview. Results further demonstrate that the effects of blind versus non-blind interviewing may extend beyond the immediate context of the interview to a later recall attempt. With instructions to avoid suggestive questions, witnesses of blind interviewers were more accurate than witnesses of incorrectly informed interviewers when recalling the event 1 week later. In addition, blind interviewers had more accurate memories for the witnesses’ account of the event during the interview compared to non-blind interviewers.

The role of factors previously implicated as leading to confirmation bias during hypothesis testing was explored. Confirmation bias is a phenomenon in which people select cases for testing when the expected results of the case are more likely to support their current belief than falsify it. Klayman (1995) proposed three primary determinants for confirmation bias. Klayman and his colleagues proposed that a general positive testing strategy leads to the phenomenon of confirmation bias. According to Klayman’s account, participants in previous research were not actively working to support their hypothesis. Rather, they were applying a valid hypothesis testing strategy that works well outside of laboratory tasks. In laboratory tasks, such as Wason’s 2-4-6 task (Wason, 1960), the strategy failed because the nature of the task takes advantage of particular flaws in the positive testing behavior participants learned through their experience with the real-world. Given Klayman’s proposed set of determinants for the positive testing strategy phenomenon, treatments were developed that would directly violate the assumptions supporting application of the positive testing strategy. If participants were able to identify and act on these violations of the assumptions, the number of positive tests was expected to be reduced. The test selection portion of the Mynatt, Doherty, and Tweney (1977) microworld experiment was modified with additional instruction conditions and a new scenario description to investigate the impact of the treatments to reduce confirmation bias in test selection. Despite expectations, the thematic content modifications and determinant-targeting instruction conditions had no effect on participant positive test selection.

It has been shown that there exists a relationship between levels of metacognitive ability and estimation of personal ability for largely verbally-based tasks, where those with lessened facility for the task tend toward overestimation of their aptitude relative to their peers (Kruger and Dunning, 1999). This study examines this effect for a task of mechanical ability for volunteer participants (n = 69), where participants were given an abbreviated form of the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test (BMCT) to establish a level of competency. Following the administration of the BMCT, the participants were then asked to speculate on the hypothetical grade for their performance, as well as the relationship between their hypothetical grade, and the grades of others. Participants then "tutored" a hypothetical student on the solution to one of the problems found on the BMCT, and their explanations were coded for degree of bias towards confirmation versus disconfirmation that was utilized in the problem solving. It was found that females' basic ability had a greater range than males', and females on the high and low ends of competency made greater use of confirming strategies in their problem solving. This is indicative of the overall observed interaction effect between Gender, Perceived Relative Competence, and Actual Competence observed in this study.

Research on underdogs has suggested that consumers feel sympathy for and a desire to support the underdog. However, it is unclear how their evaluations of the underdog will change if they receive negative information about it. The current research aims to explore the role of negative word-of-mouth of the underdog, compared to the top dog, in consumers’ brand attitude, brand value, and purchase intention. Specifically, drawing on two streams of research, two competing hypotheses are proposed and tested. An experiment was conducted with online consumer panel members. Consistent with confirmation bias and familiarity principle, the results supported a hypothesis that an underdog brand suffers more than a top dog brand from negative online word-of-mouth. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings along with future research directions are discussed.

abstract: Previous research from Rajsic et al. (2015, 2017) suggests that a visual form of confirmation bias arises during visual search for simple stimuli, under certain conditions, wherein people are biased to seek stimuli matching an initial cue color even when this strategy is not optimal. Furthermore, recent research from our lab suggests that varying the prevalence of cue-colored targets does not attenuate the visual confirmation bias, although people still fail to detect rare targets regardless of whether they match the initial cue (Walenchok et al. under review). The present investigation examines the boundary conditions of the visual confirmation bias under conditions of equal, low, and high cued-target frequency. Across experiments, I found that: (1) People are strongly susceptible to the low-prevalence effect, often failing to detect rare targets regardless of whether they match the cue (Wolfe et al., 2005). (2) However, they are still biased to seek cue-colored stimuli, even when such targets are rare. (3) Regardless of target prevalence, people employ strategies when search is made sufficiently burdensome with distributed items and large search sets. These results further support previous findings that the low-prevalence effect arises from a failure to perceive rare items (Hout et al., 2015), while visual confirmation bias is a bias of attentional guidance (Rajsic et al., 2015, 2017). / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2018

abstract: As deception in cyberspace becomes more dynamic, research in this area should also take a dynamic approach to battling deception and false information. Research has previously shown that people are no better than chance at detecting deception. Deceptive information in cyberspace, specifically on social media, is not exempt from this pitfall. Current practices in social media rely on the users to detect false information and use appropriate discretion when deciding to share information online. This is ineffective and will predicatively end with users being unable to discern true from false information at all, as deceptive information becomes more difficult to distinguish from true information. To proactively combat inaccurate and deceptive information on social media, research must be conducted to understand not only the interaction effects of false content and user characteristics, but user behavior that stems from this interaction as well. This study investigated the effects of confirmation bias and susceptibility to deception on an individual’s choice to share information, specifically to understand how these factors relate to the sharing of false controversial information. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Human Systems Engineering 2019

This thesis has explored the context of police interviews with suspects of serious crimes. Focus group studies, a case study and additional interviews have shown several aspects of information flow, decision making, interviewing tactics, human rights and tacit knowledge as these interviews are planned, performed and evaluated. The informants, homicide investigators, describe their work as an information generating and information evaluating process. They apply a series of methods, e. g. different forms of tactics in the use of investigative information during the police interviews. Based on the informants’ description and the case study, their methods seem to have research evidence in general, where such is available. The informants specifically stress the important role of planning and evaluation. The investigative process generates a vast amount of situations where decision making is needed. In these, the bases for the decisions are mainly the information flow of the investigation, which tends to be obscure and in constant change. The investigators’ decision making is thereby exposed to the risk of confirmation bias. The informants express an ambition to work objectively and to presume the suspects’ innocence. However, this generates a psychological conflict, which might affect the human rights of the suspect in negative ways. The informants describe several ways to handle this conflict. The informants describe that they have several concerns when making decisions. These can be categorized as legal, organizational and tactical concerns. Taken together, legal rule conflicts and the organizational ambition to lead the investigators in a target oriented way using quantitative measures, result in strong incitements for investigations to be finalized when they are good enough, rather than when they are good. The informants describe their profession as one where it is possible to develop expertise and where tacit knowledge plays an important role. When previous research on tacit knowledge is combined with the interview results, there seems to be a level between the tacit and the explicit knowledge. I have called this low-key knowledge. This low-key knowledge can be verbalized in the proper context in communication among those initiated in the subject at hand. The low-key knowledge also seems to risk being over-voiced in certain contexts.

Submitted by Flavio Soriano (flavio.soriano@hotmail.com) on 2015-03-07T17:18:58Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2015_MPGI_Overconfidence and Confirmation Bias_Flavio Soriano.pdf: 1280021 bytes, checksum: 3d8e4c16ffd1a93c2e17526cdf8e8c77 (MD5) / Rejected by Luana Rodrigues (luana.rodrigues@fgv.br), reason: Bom dia Flávio, Por gentileza, altere o campo "knowledge field" para : INTERNACIONALIZAÇÃO DE EMPRESAS, pois este item deve ser o mesmo escrito na ata. Obrigada. Atenciosamente, Luana de Assis Rodrigues Cursos de Pós-Graduação – Post Graduate Program (55 11) 3799-3492 SRA - Secretaria de Registros Acadêmicos on 2015-03-09T15:00:41Z (GMT) / Submitted by Flavio Soriano (flavio.soriano@hotmail.com) on 2015-03-09T18:10:25Z No. of bitstreams: 2 2015_MPGI_Overconfidence and Confirmation Bias_Flavio Soriano_Sent.pdf: 1280074 bytes, checksum: 7d0b0052de90114e6e1a756adb5d1c06 (MD5) 2015_MPGI_Overconfidence and Confirmation Bias_Flavio Soriano_Sent.pdf: 1280074 bytes, checksum: 7d0b0052de90114e6e1a756adb5d1c06 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luana Rodrigues (luana.rodrigues@fgv.br) on 2015-03-09T18:12:06Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 2015_MPGI_Overconfidence and Confirmation Bias_Flavio Soriano_Sent.pdf: 1280074 bytes, checksum: 7d0b0052de90114e6e1a756adb5d1c06 (MD5) 2015_MPGI_Overconfidence and Confirmation Bias_Flavio Soriano_Sent.pdf: 1280074 bytes, checksum: 7d0b0052de90114e6e1a756adb5d1c06 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-10T12:02:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 2015_MPGI_Overconfidence and Confirmation Bias_Flavio Soriano_Sent.pdf: 1280074 bytes, checksum: 7d0b0052de90114e6e1a756adb5d1c06 (MD5) 2015_MPGI_Overconfidence and Confirmation Bias_Flavio Soriano_Sent.pdf: 1280074 bytes, checksum: 7d0b0052de90114e6e1a756adb5d1c06 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-02-19 / Decision makers often use ‘rules of thumb’, or heuristics, to help them handling decision situations (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979b). Those cognitive shortcuts are taken by the brain to cope with complexity and time limitation of decisions, by reducing the burden of information processing (Hodgkinson et al, 1999; Newell and Simon, 1972). Although crucial for decision-making, heuristics come at the cost of occasionally sending us off course, that is, make us fall into judgment traps (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974). Over fifty years of psychological research has shown that heuristics can lead to systematic errors, or biases, in decision-making. This study focuses on two particularly impactful biases to decision-making – the overconfidence and confirmation biases. A specific group – top management school students and recent graduates - were subject to classic experiments to measure their level of susceptibility to those biases. This population is bound to take decision positions at companies, and eventually make decisions that will impact not only their companies but society at large. The results show that this population is strongly biased by overconfidence, but less so to the confirmation bias. No significant relationship between the level of susceptibility to the overconfidence and to the confirmation bias was found. / Tomadores de decisão muitas vezes usam 'regras gerais', ou heurística, para ajudá-los a lidar com situações de tomada de decisão (Kahneman e Tversky, 1979b). Esses atalhos cognitivos são tomados pelo cérebro para lidar com a complexidade e pressão de tempo da tomada de decisão, reduzindo assim a carga de processamento de informação (Hodgkinson et al , 1999; Newell e Simon , 1972). Embora fundamental para a tomada de decisões, a heurística tem o custo de, ocasionalmente, nos tirar do curso, isto é, fazer-nos cair em armadilhas de julgamento (Tversky e Kahneman, 1974). Mais de 50 anos de pesquisa em psicologia tem mostrado que a heurística pode levar a erros sistemáticos, ou vieses, na tomada de decisão. Este estudo se concentra em dois vieses particularmente impactantes para a tomada de decisão - o excesso de confiança e o viés de confirmação. Um grupo específico – estudantes de administração e recém-formados de escolas de negócio internacionalmente renomadas – foi submetido a experimentos clássicos para medir seu nível de suscetibilidade a esses dois vieses. Esta população tende a assumir posições de decisão nas empresas, e, eventualmente, tomar decisões que terão impacto não só nas suas empresas, mas na sociedade em geral. Os resultados mostram que essa população é fortemente influenciada por excesso de confiança, mas nem tanto pelo viés de confirmação. Nenhuma relação significativa entre o excesso de confiança e a suscetibilidade ao viés de confirmação foi encontrada.

Sveriges regering och SÄPO har identifierat fake news som ett hot mot demokratin. I denna studie undersöker vi om fake news påverkar individer, trots att de vid samma tillfälle erhåller korrekt information inom ämnet. Detta gjordes genom en enkätundersökning på studenter vid Uppsala universitet. Vi fann att erhållandet av korrekt information inte är tillräckligt för att motverka effekten av att exponeras för falsk information. De studenter som fick läsa en mening med falsk information var 15 procentenheter mer sannolika att svara att de anser att staten lägger för mycket resurser på invandringen jämfört med kontrollgruppen. Resultatet tyder på att politiker, organisationer och privatpersoner kan dra nytta av att sprida fake news, att de kan göra så anonymt, och att faktagranskning ensamt inte kan stävja problemet med fake news. / The Swedish government and the Swedish Security Service have identified fake news as a threat to democracy. In this study, we investigate if fake news affect individuals, even though they receive correct information regarding the subject simultaneously. This was accomplished through handing out a survey to students at Uppsala University. We found that obtaining correct information is insufficient to counteract the effects of being exposed to fake news. The students who read a sentence with false information were 15 percentage points more likely to answer that they believe that the Swedish government allocates too much resources towards immigration compared to the control group. The result indicate that politicians, organizations and individuals can take advantage of spreading fake news, that they can do so anonymously, and that fact checking alone cannot solve the problem of fake news.

BAKGRUND: Kryptovalutor saknar de makroekonomiska faktorer som ligger till grund för prissättningen av vanliga valutor. Istället visar forskning att spekulativ handel och trendsökande handlare är vanligt förekommande och att det bidrar till ökad volatilitet på marknaden. Forskning visar också att overconfidence och confirmation bias bidrar med såväl ökad volatilitet som påverkan på investeringars resultat. Kunskapen om psykologiska bias och hanteringen av dem kan få stora konsekvenser på resultatet men hur privata kryptoinvesterare ser på dem är fortfarande ett outforskat ämne. SYFTE: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka och analysera hur väl privatsparare på kryptovalutamarknaden känner till overconfidence och confirmation bias, vilka erfarenheter de har och vilka åtgärder de gör för att hantera dessa bias. GENOMFÖRANDE: Studien har genomförts genom kvalitativa intervjuer med åtta privata kryptoinvesterare. Intervjuerna har utgått från en intervjumall konstruerad för att på djupet kunna ta del av respondenternas kunskaper och erfarenheter. Intervjun har även inkluderat ett test för overconfidence för att möjliggöra för respondenternas egna reflektioner kring sin egen eventuella overconfidence.   SLUTSATS: Studien visar att den teoretiska kunskapen om overconfidence och confirmation bias är låg men att den erfarenhetsbaserade kunskapen är hög. Vad gäller hanteringen av risk och psykologiska bias ligger inte respondenternas strategier i linje med forskningen men marknadens säregna egenskaper möjliggör för ekonomisk vinning i utnyttjandet av andra investerares bias.