ADMS 2511 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Confirmation Bias, Selective Perception
1 May 2018
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ADMS 2511 Lecture 24 Notes – Confirmation Bias
Introduction
• Consider the role of anchoring in negotiations.
• Any time a negotiation takes place, so does anchoring.
• As soon as someone states a number, your ability to ignore that number has been
compromised.
• For instance, when a prospective employer asks how much you were making in your
prior jo, your aswer typially ahors the eployer’s offer.
• You may want to keep this in mind when you negotiate your salary, but remember to
set the anchor only as high as you realistically can.
• The more precise your anchor, the smaller the adjustment.
• Some research suggests that people think of making an adjustment after an anchor is
set as rounding off a number.
• If you suggest a salary of $55 000, your boss will consider $50 000 to $60 000 a
reasonable range for negotiation, but if you mention $55 650, your boss is more likely to
consider $55 000 to $56 000 the range of likely values for negotiation.
• The rational decision-making process assumes that we objectively gather information.
• But we do’t.
• We selectively gather it.
• The confirmation bias represents a case of selective perception.
• We seek out information that reaffirms our past choices, and we discount information
that contradicts them.
• We also tend to accept at face value information that confirms our preconceived views,
while we are skeptical of information that challenges these views.
• Therefore, the information we gather is typically biased toward supporting views we
already hold.
• This confirmation bias influences where we go to collect evidence because we tend to
seek out sources most likely to tell us what we want to hear.
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