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Confirmation Bias: Roles of Search Engines and Search Contexts

V. Kayhan

Published 2015 in International Conference on Interaction Sciences

ABSTRACT

Prior work shows that confirmation bias, defined as the tendency to seek confirming evidence, is prevalent on the Web as well. While this has been attributed to individuals' psychological needs or cognitive limitations, the roles of search engines and search contexts have largely been neglected. The goals of this study are to examine how search contexts may change the composition of search results, and how – if at all – search engines may contribute to confirmation bias. Results of two studies show that search engines may exacerbate confirmation bias by generating results that consist only of confirming evidence for search contexts where disconfirming evidence is identified using different terms or phrases. This induces individuals to make biased decisions. Findings of this study deepen our understanding of the ways in which confirmation bias unfolds on the Web when individuals use search engines.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2015

  • Venue

    International Conference on Interaction Sciences

  • Publication date

    Unknown publication date

  • Fields of study

    Computer Science, Psychology

  • Identifiers

    No identifiers available.

  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

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