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TopicsConsider-the-opposite debiasing Cognitive Psychology Confirmation bias

Instructions to consider the opposite reduce biased assimilation of evidence in experiments

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Preliminary · from the Steward of Deliberately considering reasons a favored conclusion could be wrong reduces confirmation bias and overconfidence, recorded when this subclaim was created and pending this claim's own assessment.

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The founding evidence is Lord, Lepper and Preston (1984), two experiments showing that consider-the-opposite instructions reduced biased assimilation of mixed evidence more than demand-laden instructions to be fair and unbiased (https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.47.6.1231). The finding is widely cited and conceptually replicated in anchoring paradigms (Mussweiler, Strack and Pfeiffer 2000), but the original samples were small by modern standards and more recent tests in politically charged domains have been mixed, so the effect's size and generality deserve scrutiny even though the direction is well supported.

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Considering the opposite: a corrective strategy for social judgment1984 Untraced · nothing upstream recorded

In two separate but conceptually parallel experiments, the induction of a consider-the-opposite strategy had greater corrective effect than more demand-laden alternative instructions to be as fair and unbiased as possible.

Considering the opposite: a corrective strategy for social judgmentextraction 1.00

Abstract of the original two-experiment paper testing consider-the-opposite instructions against biased assimilation and anchoring, the founding evidence for the strategy.

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