Several cognitive mechanisms have been proposed to explain the maintenance of delusions in schizophrenia, including bias against
disconfirmatory evidence, bias in favor of confirmatory evidence, and safety-seeking behaviors.
The first three pieces were designed to be loosely confirmatory, the latter three to be more decidedly
disconfirmatory.
See Sheff, Biasing Brands, supra note 4, at 1287-95 (discussing the persistence of consumer biases even in the face of
disconfirmatory evidence and even when consumers are warned of their tendency toward biased decisionmaking); id.
But for researchers to restrict an approach to a purely
disconfirmatory agenda would be throwing the baby out with the bath water, or at least wilfully not checking to see if the baby is in the bath first, because we just don't like children.
Sawatsky also believed in maintaining a militant neutrality in his approach, always keeping an open mind and allowing for
disconfirmatory evidence to be heard.
the availability heuristic), (88) the tendency to be overconfident in one's judgments, particularly when uncertainty is involved (the overconfidence bias), (89) the tendency to rely only on confirmatory evidence, while ignoring
disconfirmatory evidence (the confirmation trap bias), (90) and the reputational influences that cause Groupthink (the pressure to conform to group norms).
Accordingly, this study used multilevel modeling to analyze 772 confirmatory and
disconfirmatory questions generated by 97 mental health counselors in training.
On the basis of the work reviewed, we conceive of hypothesis testing in terms of two process components and their respective strategies: (1) information search, which can incorporate confirmatory or
disconfirmatory strategies and (2) intended use of the information, which may involve biased or unbiased strategies.
When a state violates an existing rule of customary international law, it undoubtedly is 'guilty' of an illegal act, but the illegal act itself becomes a
disconfirmatory instance of the underlying rule.
Ridley (1995) encouraged counselors to use both confirmatory as well as
disconfirmatory strategies so that they deliberately seek to validate as well as invalidate their clinical judgments.
Once counselors formulate negative hypotheses regarding clients, they may demonstrate confirmatory bias, seeking confirmatory information while paying less attention to
disconfirmatory information, even in the face of contradictory evidence (Strohmer & Shivy, 1994; Strohmer, Shivy, & Chiodo, 1990).
These findings are consistent with two recently published accounts showing that practitioners rarely reconsider their decisions or retrace the steps that led them to their decisions (Murdach, 1995) and that social workers prefer confirmatory information strategies to
disconfirmatory ones by a ratio of more than four to one (Osmo & Rosen, 2002).
