Confirmation Bias Presentation

2 Post author: Larks 05 June 2014 09:07PM

On Monday I need to give a presentation to a group of 6-15 finance professionals on Confirmation Bias. I intend to use the 2-4-6 task to demonstrate it.

 

Do people have any advise on how to make this work well? Do people tend to fall for it? Does it help them understand afterwards?

 

(In ages gone by I would have made this post longer, or in the Open Thread, or not at all. But I gather LW has been seeing a drop-off in volume, so I decided I'd lower the bar I set myself)

Comments (5)

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 05 June 2014 11:15:31PM 4 points [-]

I seem to recall the Wason Selection Task works pretty well in group scenarios. Unlike the Triplets Game (2-4-6) it just has a single question that you can field to a room, rather than multiple iterations that are best dealt with by a single participant.

Comment author: Larks 06 June 2014 01:21:45AM 0 points [-]

Yup, that was my second thought. I'm not sure it exactly demonstrates confirmation bias though.

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 06 June 2014 10:21:40AM 1 point [-]

People tend to check the cards that corroborate the rule they're testing, rather than the ones that challenge it. That doesn't seem to demonstrate confirmation bias any less than the triplets game.

Comment author: Unnamed 05 June 2014 09:33:12PM 4 points [-]

It's tricky to do the 2-4-6 task with a group, since it only takes 1 person to lead the whole group into the right part of the example space. Could you do it in pairs somehow?

Comment author: Larks 06 June 2014 01:20:20AM 0 points [-]

That was my concern also. The concern with pairs is setup time.