PsyFi Search

Showing posts with label wason test. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wason test. Show all posts

Saturday, 30 January 2010

Confirmation Bias, The Investor’s Curse

Behavioral Biases (7): Confirmation Bias

The problem of confirmation bias – the tendency of people to seek evidence confirming an already held opinion and to avoid looking for that which might upset their carefully constructed mental models has attracted a lot of attention from researchers. It occurs across all domains of human endeavour and triggers all sorts of implausible behaviour, yet investors and institutions remain in its thrall.

We find examples in law courts and doctor’s surgeries, in scientist’s laboratories and the lairs of legislators. So we shouldn’t be surprised to find it coursing through the veins of economists and investors, colouring their every thought and structuring their every idea. Of course a rational market participant, faced with a theory built on a crumbling cornerstone will abandon their ideas and look for some new ones. As you’d expect, therefore, we do no such thing, clinging irrationally to the wreckage of our dreams as they collapse around us.