Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions, independently of whether they are true. As a result, people gather new evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs. Biased search, interpretation and/or recall have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a stronger weighting for data encountered early in an arbitrary series) and illusory correlation (in which people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations). Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Hence they can lead to disastrous decisions, especially in organizational, military and political contexts.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1793:

After a siege of 18 weeks, French troops in Mainz surrendered to Prussian forces, effectively ending the Republic of Mainz, the first democratic state on the current German territory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Mainz

1881:

The International Federation of Gymnastics, the world's oldest international sport federation, was founded in Liège, Belgium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9d%C3%A9ration_Internationale_de_Gymnastique

1983:

Air Canada Flight 143 crash-landed in Gimli, Manitoba, Canada, without loss of life after the crew was forced to glide the aircraft when it completely ran out of fuel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

1995:

Hale-Bopp , one of the most widely observed comets of the twentieth century, was discovered by two independent observers, Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp, at a great distance from the Sun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Hale-Bopp

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

cwm (n): A valley head created through glacial erosion and with a shape similar to an amphitheatre http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cwm

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act — and if necessary, to suffer and die — for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied. These lessons must be learned anew by each succeeding generation, and that generation is fortunate indeed which learns from other than its own bitter experience. --Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Haile_Selassie_I_of_Ethiopia