Confirmation bias is adaptive when coupled with efficient metacognition

Biases in the consideration of evidence can reduce the chances of consensus between people with different viewpoints. While such altered information processing typically leads to detrimental performance in laboratory tasks, the ubiquitous nature of confirmation bias makes it unlikely that selective information processing is universally harmful. Here, we suggest that confirmation bias is adaptive to the extent that agents have good metacognition, allowing them to downweight contradictory information when correct but still able to seek new information when they realize they are wrong. Using simulation-based modelling, we explore how the adaptiveness of holding a confirmation bias depends on such metacognitive insight. We find that the behavioural consequences of selective information processing are systematically affected by agents' introspective abilities. Strikingly, we find that selective information processing can even improve decision-making when compared with unbiased evidence accumulation, as long as it is accompanied by good metacognition. These results further suggest that interventions which boost people's metacognition might be efficient in alleviating the negative effects of selective information processing on issues such as political polarization. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms’.

Confirmation bias is adaptive when coupled with efficient metacognition

Biases in the consideration of evidence can reduce the chances of consensus between people with different viewpoints. While such altered information processing typically leads to detrimental performance in laboratory tasks, the ubiquitous nature of confirmation bias makes it unlikely that selective information processing is universally harmful. Here we suggest that confirmation bias is adaptive to the extent that agents have good metacognition, allowing them to downweight contradictory information when correct but still able to seek new information when they realise they are wrong. Using simulation-based modelling, we explore how the adaptiveness of holding a confirmation bias depends on such metacognitive insight. We find that the behavioural consequences of selective information processing are systematically affected by agents’ introspective abilities. Strikingly, we find that selective information processing can even improve decision-making when compared to unbiased evidence accumulation, as long as it is accompanied by good metacognition. These results further suggest that interventions which boost people’s metacognition might be efficient in alleviating the negative effects of selective information processing on issues such as political polarisation.

From Selective Exposure to Selective Information Processing: A Motivated Reasoning Approach

Literature suggests that while without doubt people engage in selective exposure to information, this does not entail that they also engage in selective avoidance of opinion-challenging information<em>.</em> However, cross-cutting exposure does not always lead to dispassionate deliberation. In this commentary I explore psychological conditions as they apply to attitude-based selection and make an argument that selectivity does not stop at exposure but continues as audiences engage with information they encounter and incorporate in their decision-making. I propose the theory of motivated reasoning as a rich theoretical underpinning that helps us understand selective exposure and selective information processing.

Staying over-optimistic about the future: Uncovering attentional biases to climate change messages

There is considerable concern that the public are not getting the message about climate change. One possible explanation is “optimism bias,” where individuals overestimate the likelihood of positive events happening to them and underestimate the likelihood of negative events. Evidence from behavioral neuroscience suggest that this bias is underpinned by selective information processing, specifically through a reduced level of neural coding of undesirable information, and an unconscious tendency for optimists to avoid fixating negative information. Here we test how this bias in attention could relate to the processing of climate change messages. Using eye tracking, we found that level of dispositional optimism affected visual fixations on climate change messages. Optimists spent less time (overall dwell time) attending to any arguments about climate changes (either “for” or “against”) with substantially shorter individual fixations on aspects of arguments for climate change, i.e., those that reflect the scientific consensus but are bad news. We also found that when asked to summarize what they had read, non-optimists were more likely to frame their recall in terms of the arguments “for” climate change; optimists were significantly more likely to frame it in terms of a debate between two opposing positions. Those highest in dispositional optimism seemed to have the strongest and most pronounced level of optimism bias when it came to estimating the probability of being personally affected by climate change. We discuss the importance of overcoming this cognitive bias to develop more effective strategies for communicating about climate change.

Social Information Processing and Reactive and Proactive Aggression among Children with ADHD

<p>This study examined the social information processing qualities among children with reactive and proactive aggression among children with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). It enrolled a total of 112 Saudi school children (62 boys, 50 girls; mean age = 9.26 years, SD = 1.98) of which 51 were diagnosed with ADHD and 61 typically developing peers. Data on children’s social informational processing and type of aggression displayed were gathered and analyzed for group differences by diagnosis and gender within diagnosis. Findings suggest gaps in social information processing and elevated aggression levels among children with ADHD compared to typical others. Male children with ADHD to present mostly with proactive aggression and self-serving information processing. Female ADHD were characterized by reactive aggression and selective information processing. Implicit socialization processes might explain the differences in social information processing and type of aggression among male and female students with Arabic culture background.</p><p><br /><strong></strong></p>

Leadership and Information Processing

There is a large body of research showing that people selectively prefer information that supports their decisions and opinions, and avoid conflicting information (selective information processing). Three studies were conducted to examine how the different leadership styles of supervisors influence subordinates’ selective information processing (i.e., the evaluation, seeking, and conveying of information). Studies 1 and 2 indicate that students in the role of subordinates who were exposed to transformational supervisors process information in a more balanced way than do those who were led by a transactional supervisor. Study 3 was carried out with professionals and showed that transformational leadership was negatively correlated with selective information seeking and conveying. This finding was mediated by the experience of positive emotions. Transactional leadership, by contrast, was not significantly associated with selective information processing. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

A Multi-level Account of Selective Attention

To achieve behavioural goals, relevant sensory stimuli must be processed more quickly and reliably than irrelevant distracters. The ability to prioritize relevant over irrelevant stimuli is usually referred to as selective information processing, or selective attention. Over the last 50–60 years, there has been an ongoing debate about the point along the sensory–response processing stream at which selective attention operates: are relevant and irrelevant inputs segregated early in processing based on low-level featural differences, or does this segregation occur late in processing after the meaning of each stimulus has been computed? As with nearly all dichotomies in psychology, the emerging consensus is that neither extreme is correct. Instead, depending on task demands, the mechanisms of selective attention can flexibly operate on the quality of low-level sensory representations as well as on later stages of semantic analysis and decision-making.