Confirmation Bias: A Methodology of Social Science

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Confirmation BiasA Methodology of Social Science

• 12300160041 ???

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Outline

• 1.Experiment
• 2.Analysis of the experiment
• 3.Confirmation bias
• 4.Reasons of confirmation bias
• 5.Conclusion

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Wason Selection Task----An Experiment

• Here are four cards and each of them has a letter
  on one side and a number on the other side.

E
K
4
7
Hypothesis If there is a vowel on one side of
the card, there must be an even number on the
other side. To examine whether this hypothesis
is true, which card(s) do you have to turn ?
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Wason Selection Task A Logic Puzzle
Keywords 1.Logic puzzle 2.Deductive
reasoning 3.Applied to many fields
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Results of Wason Selection Task
E,7 (4)
People who made the right selection only account
for 4
E,4,7 (34)
E,4 (44)
Why do they make the wrong choices?
E 11
The answer may be the "Confirmation Bias"
Other Answers 7
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Confirmation Bias"people tend to believe what
they believe"

• "The Internal "yes man"

"People tend to believe Confirmation bias has
been described as an internal "yes man", echoing
back a person's beliefs like Charles Dickens'
character Uriah Heep.
The "Yes man"
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Why Confirmation Bias?

• 1.Confirming is easier and more effective than
  falsifying.
• 2.Confirmation is beneficial during human
  evolution

How to apply these conclusions into the
discussion of methodology in social science?
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Methodology In Social Science
1. Contemplative rather than derivative 2. Case
Study rather than Casual Analysis 3. Practical
rather than Transcendental
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Methodology In Social Science

• One would be strangely mistaken about our
  thought if he drew the conclusion that sociology,
  according to us, must, or even can, make an
  abstraction of man and his faculties.
• Emile Durkheim

The only antecedents of historical phenomena are
historical phenomena. Alfred Kroeber

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A Humanistic and Practical turn
To be radical is to go to the root of the
matter. For man, the root is man himself. Karl
Marx, Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right,
1843