Beliefs survive the discrediting of the evidence that produced them.
Ross and Lepper gave subjects fake feedback on a task, then fully debriefed them. Self-assessments remained shifted afterwards — the belief outlived the evidence that had been explicitly withdrawn.
In practice
- A team is shown that the incident data behind their reliability estimate was miscoded, and the estimate persists in every subsequent conversation.
- A candidate is cleared of the allegation that ended their shortlisting, and is not re-shortlisted.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- The catalogue of predictable errors