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Assessing Facts & Observations Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises By Raymond S. Nickerson. Published in Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175-250.
Confirmation bias, to which loss control professionals are vulnerable, encompasses seeking or interpreting evidence in ways that are partid to existing beliefs, expectations or a hypothesis already in mind. In musical terms, is it dissident or harmonious when you find that all injuries are the result of an unsafe act and an unsafe condition? In any injury situation, causal elements will be evaluated.
Like it or not, confirmation biases will affect the evaluation. "Confirmation bias is perhaps the best known and most widely accepted notion of inferential error to come out of the literature on human reasoning" (Evans, 1989, p. 41). Confirmation bias influences first observations, subsequent observations and, as Evans suggests, the thinking about those observations. Nickerson generally limits his evidence to the psychological literature. On the other hand, Sackett (1979) catalogs 35 different biases in case control studies.
When evaluating nonfiction, one must note what an author announces as his plan, then determine whether s/he meets it. Nickerson announces his plan, shown here in bold type, in four sections. His headings as they actually appear in the article are shown in italics followed by a sample of the supporting evidence from that section.
1) I review experimental evidence of the operation of a confirmation bias. (Experimental Studies)
It is well demonstrated that people are inclined to give preferential treatment to evidence that supports an existing belief. There is a bias for preferring evidence for "my side" on controversial issues. While supporting my...