The confirmation bias is a well-known form of motivated reasoning that serves to protect an individual from cognitive discomfort. Hearing rival viewpoints or belief-opposing information creates cognitive dissonance, and so avoiding exposure to, or discounting the validity of, dissonant...

The confirmation bias, unlike other decision biases, has been shown both empirically and in theory to be enhanced with deliberation. This suggests that limited attention, reduced deliberation, or limited available cognitive resources may moderate this bias. We aimed to test this hypothesis using...

This paper reports results from a unique two-stage experiment designed to examine the spillover effects of optimism and pessimism. In stage 1, we induce optimism or pessimism onto subjects by randomly assigning a high or low piece rate for performing a cognitive task. We find that participants...

In this study we test predictions from Unconscious Thought Theory (UTT) that unconscious thought will lead to better decision making in complex decision tasks relative to conscious thought. Different from prior work testing this prediction, we use a method of manipulating conscious and...