People's motivations bias how they gather information

A new study suggests people stop gathering evidence earlier when the data supports their desired conclusion than when it supports the conclusion they wish was false. So much for “big” data, which other studies have shown to be just as subjective as “little” data.

Previous studies have also provided clues that people gather less information before reaching desirable beliefs. For example, people are more likely to seek a second medical opinion when the first diagnosis is grave. However, those studies had design flaws which prevented a definitive conclusion and so the reasons behind this bias remained unknown. By fitting people's behavior to a mathematical model, the researchers were able to identify the reasons for this bias.

What the researchers say: "Our research suggests that people start with an assumption that their favored conclusion is more likely true and weight each piece of evidence supporting it more than evidence opposing it. Because of that, people will find no need to gather additional information that could have revealed their conclusion to be false. They will stop the investigation as soon as the jury tilts in their favor," said the lead author.

In this new study, 84 volunteers played an online categorization game in which they could gather as much evidence as they wanted to help them make judgements and were paid according to how accurate they were. In addition, if the evidence pointed to a certain category, they would get bonus points, and if it pointed to another category, they would lose points. So, while there was reason to wish the evidence pointed to a specific judgement, the only way for volunteers to maximize rewards was to provide accurate responses. Despite this, they found that the volunteers stopped gathering data earlier when it supported the conclusion they wished was true than when it supported the undesirable conclusion.

"Today, a limitless amount of information is available at the click of a mouse," the researchers said. "However, because people are likely to conduct less through searches when the first few hits provide desirable information, this wealth of data will not necessarily translate to more accurate beliefs."

So, what? OK, I’ll resist the temptation to make the obvious “how much data is behind a DT vote?” comment.