Individuals tend to take longer to read information that conflicts with their beliefs

Pepperdine University

When a person's prior beliefs or attitudes impact what information they pay attention to and how they interpret new information. This bias often manifests as favoring information that is consistent with one's worldview and beliefs.

Prior Belief Bias

Britt, M. A., Rouet, J.-F., Blaum, D., & Millis, K. (2019). A Reasoned Approach to Dealing With Fake News. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 6(1), 94–101. https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732218814855

A Reasoned Approach to Dealing With Fake News

When a person's prior belief is strengthened despite being presented with evidence to the contrary.  

Backfire effect

A bias in which new information that supports what we want to believe is readily accepted and information that supports what we do not want to believe is scrutinized in an effort to reduce cognitive dissonance. Motivated reasoning is very similar to confirmation bias

Motivated Reasoning

The impact of prior beliefs on comprehension

Confirmation bias is the cognitive tendency to selectively focus on cases that validate our pre-existing intuitive beliefs while actively disregarding or forgetting cases that disconfirm them. This mental shortcut leads individuals to reinforce incorrect assumptions by ignoring contradictory evidence.

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