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When interacting with information retrieval (IR) systems, users, affected by confirmation biases, tend to select search results that confirm their existing beliefs on socially significant contentious issues. To understand the judgments and attitude changes of users searching online, our study examined how cognitively biased users interact with algorithmically biased search engine result pages (SERPs). We designed three-query search sessions on debated topics under various bias conditions. We recruited 1,321 crowdsourcing participants and explored their attitude changes, search interactions, and the effects of confirmation bias. Three key findings emerged: 1) most attitude changes occur in the initial query of a search session; 2) Confirmation bias and result presentation on SERPs affect the number and depth of clicks in the current query and perceived familiarity with clicked results in subsequent queries; 3) The bias position also affects attitude changes of users with lower perceived openness to conflicting opinions. Our study goes beyond traditional simulation-based evaluation settings and simulated rational users, sheds light on the mixed effects of human biases and algorithmic biases in information retrieval tasks on debated topics, and can inform the design of bias-aware user models, human-centered bias mitigation techniques, and socially responsible intelligent IR systems.
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Survey & Experimental Evidence of Cognitive Biases in Psychologists’ Judgments
Three studies (1 survey, 2 experiments) examine cognitive biases in the professional judgments of nationally-representative samples of psychologists working in legal contexts. Study 1 (N= 84) demonstrates robust evidence of the bias blind spot (Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002) in experts’ judgments. Psychologists rated their own susceptibility to bias in their professional work lower than their colleagues (and laypeople). As expected, they perceived bias mitigating procedures as more threatening to their own domain than outside domains, and more experience was correlated with higher perceived threat of bias mitigating procedures. Experimental studies 2 (N=118) & 3 (N=128) with randomly-selected psychologists reveals psychologists overwhelmingly engage in confirmation bias (93% with one decision opportunity in study 1, and 90%, 87%, and 82% across three decision opportunities in study 2). Cognitive reflection was negatively correlated with confirmation bias. Psychologists were also susceptible to order effects in that the order of symptoms presented affected their diagnoses–even though the same symptoms existed in the different scenarios (in opposite orders).
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- Award ID(s):
- 1655011
- PAR ID:
- 10086238
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Society for Personality & Social Psychology
- Volume:
- 2019
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
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