What are some examples of confirmation bias?

Both sides of this coin are good examples of confirmation bias. The optimist only looks for positive information and the pessimist only looks for negative information. The glass will always be half full or half empty, depending on your personal outlook. Of course, if you are a scientist then you must be neutral and objective.

Is being a pessimist a confirmation bias?

Being pessimistic is just the opposite. Always seeing the negative side of a situation can make us feel depressed and lose a sense of hope. Both sides of this coin are good examples of confirmation bias. The optimist only looks for positive information and the pessimist only looks for negative information.

What is confirmation bias & cognitive dissonance?

With confirmation bias, information that conflicts a pre-existing belief is minimized, whilst information supporting a belief is amplified. This links to another mental distortion, cognitive dissonance. This phenomenon was identified by psychologist Leon Festinger in 1957.

When did confirmation bias start?

One of the early demonstrations of confirmation bias appeared in an experiment by Peter Watson (1960) in which the subjects were to find the experimenter’s rule for sequencing numbers.