Confirmation Bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms
their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true
or not. Those with confirmation bias tend to notice and to look for what
confirms their beliefs, and to ignore, not to look for, or undervalue the
relevance of what contradicts their beliefs. Now hear a talk on
the same subject. The professor talks about an example in the
lecture. Explain how the example demonstrates the concept of confirmation bias.
【正确答案】topic (reading)
The topic of this lecture is confirmation bias. It happens when people tend to support their ideas to be right by neglecting other important information. The example the professor shows is a story of her friend.
example
Based on the lecture, the professor's friend was wondering whether or not to buy a house several years ago. It's beneficial to consider the distance between the house and her friend's office and the convenience of the transportation. However, the room size is not so big as she had thought. In the end, she bought the house for its good situation. After few years, the professor asked her feeling about the house and she answered very well in terms of the situation and transportation convenience, but she never mentioned the house was small because of confirmation bias.
【答案解析】[听力原文]
W: Okay, so I'll use a case study to show you what I mean by confirmation bias. A friend of mine, a few years ago told me she wanted to buy a house. Then, she found a lovely house, the distance between which and her office was only about 15—20 minutes if driving. The traffic flow had always been my friend's concern whenever she moved to a new place. Although she found a house with good location, it was not as big as she expected. After struggling whether or not to make the purchase, she finally bought the house because of the location. Having been asked about the feeling of living in that house few years later, she responded very positively in terms of the location and traffic convenience, rather than complaining about the house for being small. The confirmation bias in this case makes my friend refuse to look at both sides of the situation and ignore the size of the house.