First Impressions Matter: A Model of Confirmatory Bias
用一个简单模型说明，确认偏误（人们倾向于将新信息解读为支持已有假设）会导致过度自信，甚至可能让一个人对错误假设近乎确信，即使收到无限信息也无法纠正。
Psychological research indicates that people have a cognitive bias that leads them to misinterpret new information as supporting previously held hypotheses. We show in a simple model that such <it>confirmatory bias</it> induces overconfidence: given any probabilistic assessment by an agent that one of two hypotheses is true, the appropriate beliefs would deem it less likely to be true. Indeed, the hypothesis that the agent believes in may be more likely to be <it>wrong</it> than right. We also show that the agent may come to believe with near certainty in a false hypothesis despite receiving an infinite amount of information.