Confirmation bias emerges from an approximation to Bayesian reasoning.

Confirmation bias is defined as searching for and assimilating information in a way that favours existing beliefs. We show that confirmation bias emerges as a natural consequence of boundedly rational belief updating by presenting the BIASR model (Bayesian updating with an Independence Approximation and Source Reliability). In this model, an individual's beliefs about a hypothesis and the source reliability form a Bayesian network. Upon receiving information, an individual simultaneously updates beliefs about the hypothesis in question and the reliability of the information source. If the individual updates rationally then this introduces numerous dependencies between beliefs, the tracking of which represents an unrealistic demand on memory. We propose that human cognition overcomes this memory limitation by assuming independence between beliefs, evidence for which is provided in prior research. We show how a Bayesian belief updating model incorporating this independence approximation generates many types of confirmation bias, including biased evaluation, biased assimilation, attitude polarisation, belief perseverance and confirmation bias in the selection of sources.

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Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.