Opinion Dynamics with Confirmation Bias

Abstract

BackgroundConfirmation bias is the tendency to acquire or evaluate new information in a way that is consistent with one's preexisting beliefs. It is omnipresent in psychology, economics, and even scientific practices. Prior theoretical research of this phenomenon has mainly focused on its economic implications possibly missing its potential connections with broader notions of cognitive science.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe formulate a (non-Bayesian) model for revising subjective probabilistic opinion of a confirmationally-biased agent in the light of a persuasive opinion. The revision rule ensures that the agent does not react to persuasion that is either far from his current opinion or coincides with it. We demonstrate that the model accounts for the basic phenomenology of the social judgment theory, and allows to study various phenomena such as cognitive dissonance and boomerang effect. The model also displays the order of presentation effect–when consecutively exposed to two opinions, the preference is given to the last opinion (recency) or the first opinion (primacy) –and relates recency to confirmation bias. Finally, we study the model in the case of repeated persuasion and analyze its convergence properties.ConclusionsThe standard Bayesian approach to probabilistic opinion revision is inadequate for describing the observed phenomenology of persuasion process. The simple non-Bayesian model proposed here does agree with this phenomenology and is capable of reproducing a spectrum of effects observed in psychology: primacy-recency phenomenon, boomerang effect and cognitive dissonance. We point out several limitations of the model that should motivate its future development.

Choosing what we like vs liking what we choose: How choice-induced preference change might actually be instrumental to decision-making

“…For example, in the context of evidence-based decision making, standard cognitive dissonance theory predicts the appearance of confirmation and overconfidence biases. This is simply because weak beliefs should be reinforced by subsequent choices, despite the lack of any additional piece of evidence (Allahverdyan and Galstyan, 2014;Navajas et al, 2016). At least in principle, cognitive dissonance reduction may of course have other behavioral consequences that would overcompensate for the adverse selective pressure on cognitive biases.…”

Discrepancy and Disliking Do Not Induce Negative Opinion Shifts

“…Here, we report results from two experiments that tested whether large opinion distance could indeed trigger opinion shifts away from the source. Formal models of opinion dynamics have demonstrated that with this type of negative influence assumed, one can reconcile social influence with the observation of persisting and sometimes even increasing opinion variation in a population [ 9 , 19 , 30 – 37 ]. Balance theory [ 38 ], cognitive dissonance theory [ 39 ], and social judgment theory [ 40 ] have been used to justify that positive and negative social influence must be differentiated, assuming that people strive for agreement with a person who is similar and for disagreement with persons who are distant.…”

Active Inference for Binary Symmetric Hidden Markov Models

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