Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses.

Quotes

• It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human intellect to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives; whereas it ought properly to hold itself indifferently disposed towards both alike.
  • Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, § 46

• It is true that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.
  • Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum Century X (1627).

• Confirmation bias is a helluva drug.
  • Brian Keating, "Brian Keating: Cosmology, Astrophysics, Aliens & Losing the Nobel Prize | Lex Fridman Podcast #257". Lex Fridman, YouTube. (quote at 2:30:47 of 3:59:41)

• Our confirmation bias then leads us to seek our further information to confirm those existing views, or to reject information that challenges them.
  • George Marshall, Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, Bloomsbury, 2014, page 44 (ISBN 9781632861023).