Psychology
Types of bias and how to control
Types of bias in psychology include confirmation bias, selection bias, and observer bias. To control bias, researchers can use randomization, blinding, and standardization techniques. Randomization helps distribute potential biases evenly, blinding prevents researchers from being influenced by their expectations, and standardization ensures consistent procedures across participants.
Written by Perlego with AI-assistance
Related key terms
1 of 5
4 Key excerpts on "Types of bias and how to control"
eBook - ePubInvestment Traps Exposed
Navigating Investor Mistakes and Behavioral Biases
- H. Kent Baker, Vesa Puttonen(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Emerald Publishing Limited(Publisher)
Your Money and Your Brain , notes, “Investing isn’t about beating others at their game. It’s about controlling yourself at your own game.”TYPES OF BIASES
Controlling your behavior starts by becoming aware of your behavioral biases. A behavioral bias is the tendency to think or feel in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgment. Behavioral bias can result from either internal or external factors. Internal actors include cognitive and emotional biases.3Cognitive Bias
A cognitive bias is a type of error in thinking that occurs when people are collecting, processing, and interpreting information. It is a deficiency or limitation in how people think. Such biases can result from attempting to simplify information processing and may or may not be factual. That is, people use mental shortcuts called heuristics to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution, rather than an optimal one, and to ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Overcoming cognitive biases requires both recognizing their existence and changing the way of thinking.Emotional Bias
An emotional bias is a distortion in cognition and decision-making due to emotional factors. Unlike cognitive behavioral biases, finding a solution to emotional biases requires great care because they are tied deeply to personal sentiments. Cognitive errors are generally more easily corrected than emotional biases, which are ingrained in a person’s emotional psyche. As Warren Buffet notes about investing, “It’s an easy game if you can control your emotions.”Social Bias
Psychological influences on investor decision-making extend beyond how investors think and feel. Investors don’t make decisions totally based on internal inputs. As social creatures, others influence how someone behaves. Therefore, behavioral bias may also result from external factors called social bias . These social influences include not only the media and the Internet but also friends, colleagues, culture, and other factors. For example, one type of social bias is herd behavior
eBook - ePub- Geoffrey R. Marczyk, David DeMatteo, David Festinger(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Another example of experimenter bias is related to training and sophistication. Like people in general, researchers possess varying levels of knowledge and sophistication, which can have a significant impact on any study. Consider our previous therapy example. Let’s assume that three different researchers are conducting the therapeutic interventions. One researcher has 20 years of experience, the other has 10, and the final one is just out of graduate school and has little practical experience. Any results that we might obtain from this study might be a reflection more of therapist experience than of the nature and effectiveness of the three different types of therapy. Although subtle, experimenter biases can have a significant impact on the validity of the research findings because they can blur the relationship between the independent and dependent variables.Controlling Experimenter Bias
As just mentioned, experimenter bias can have substantial negative impacts on the overall validity of a study. Fortunately, there are a number of strategies (listed in Rapid Reference 3.4) that can be employed to minimize the impact of these biases.The first strategy is to maintain careful control over the research procedures. The goal of this approach is to hold study procedures constant, in an attempt to minimize unforeseen variance in the research design. In other words, all procedures should be carefully standardized. This might include the use of manualized study procedures, standardized instruments, and uniform scripts for interacting with research participants. Some studies go so far as to try to anticipate participant questions and behaviors and script out appropriate responses for researchers to follow.Typically, this type of control is limited to the recruitment and assessment of participants and to the giving of standardized instructions throughout the study. Inclusion criteria and standards are usually developed to ensure that only appropriate participants are included in the study. Achieving this type of control is more difficult than it might sound. Remember that research participants bring a wide range of individual differences to any research study. Despite this, there are other steps related to constancy that researchers can employ to minimize the impact of experimenter bias.
eBook - ePubPsychological Science Under Scrutiny
Recent Challenges and Proposed Solutions
- Scott O. Lilienfeld, Irwin D. Waldman, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Irwin D. Waldman(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
In all the sciences, we must constantly be re‐inventing and improving our methods, as we learn new ways that we, very human scientists, can fool ourselves, and psychology is no different. Indeed, in the history of science, past epistemological crises are often seen as vital opportunities that led to improved methods and theories. In this chapter, we consider the various forms of bias that contribute to the crisis, and then examine methods of blind analysis (MacCoun & Perlmutter, 2015) that physicists have developed to cope with similar inferential problems, and we sketch out various ways in which such methods might be adapted to canonical data analysis situations in psychology. Biases in the Research Process There are many forms of bias that can distort the selection and interpretation of research evidence. Here, we focus on two types of bias – confirmation bias and disconfirmation bias. Confirmation biases occur when the analysis is conducted in a way that favors one hypothesis or result over others, irrespective of the actual direction of the evidence (see also Chapter 9). The literature on confirmation bias is now quite large, and it has developed from many different disciplinary and theoretical streams (e.g., Bruner & Potter, 1964; Klayman & Ha, 1987; Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979; Mahoney, 1977; Nickerson, 1998; Platt, 1964; Rabin & Schrag, 1999; Snyder, 1984; Wason, 1960). In fact, the term “confirmation bias” encompasses many distinct variants. They are all biases that involve a process that favors one conclusion more than justified by either logic or empirical reality. But the varieties of confirmation biases differ with respect to modes of inference – whether they involve deduction (logic) vs. induction (evidence); and, if inductive, whether they involve evidence gathering vs. evidence interpretation
eBook - ePub- Shannon Whitten(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
For the unversed, bias refers to an inclination to perceive reality in a certain way that is both unreasoned and habitual. As a cognitive psychologist, I can testify that perceiving things in a very biased way is an intrinsic part of human nature. In fact, John Manoogian designed a graphic categorizing over 180 documented biases that stymie our thinking! This graphic is presented in Figure 1.1. For now, let’s focus on two important ones: confirmation bias and selection bias. One bias that is particularly difficult to surmount is a confirmation bias, which denotes the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions. You are likely to have seen this while scrolling through your favorite social media platform: very liberal or very conservative people tend to pay more attention to articles or stories that support their viewpoint. They are more likely to eagerly accept these stories without much in the way of criticism. Conversely, many tend to be very critical of any information that is in contrast to what they believe. That is confirmation bias at work! In terms of our question, if we already believe that there is a linkage between creativity and mental illness, we may be more tempted to seek out biographies of artists who were known to be beleaguered with mental illness. To be more precise, we may wholeheartedly accept these accounts but dismiss counterexamples with statements such as “Oh, that artist is probably really insane but just really good at hiding it.” We hang on to this tendency to confirm our preexisting ideas despite knowing all about this bias and its consequences. Confirmation bias is truly a difficult bias to shake off! The aforementioned example I cited about selecting biographies that support our preexisting idea is referred to as a selection bias. This may be done consciously or subconsciously
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
