Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, UK.
Max Planck University College London Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, London WC1B 5EH, UK.
Nat Commun. 2020 May 26;11(1):2634. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-16278-6.
A prominent source of polarised and entrenched beliefs is confirmation bias, where evidence against one's position is selectively disregarded. This effect is most starkly evident when opposing parties are highly confident in their decisions. Here we combine human magnetoencephalography (MEG) with behavioural and neural modelling to identify alterations in post-decisional processing that contribute to the phenomenon of confirmation bias. We show that holding high confidence in a decision leads to a striking modulation of post-decision neural processing, such that integration of confirmatory evidence is amplified while disconfirmatory evidence processing is abolished. We conclude that confidence shapes a selective neural gating for choice-consistent information, reducing the likelihood of changes of mind on the basis of new information. A central role for confidence in shaping the fidelity of evidence accumulation indicates that metacognitive interventions may help ameliorate this pervasive cognitive bias.
一个导致观点极化和根深蒂固的主要原因是确认偏误，即人们会有选择地忽视与自己立场相悖的证据。当对立双方对自己的决策非常有信心时，这种影响最为明显。在这里，我们结合人类脑磁图（MEG）与行为和神经建模，来识别导致确认偏误现象的决策后处理变化。我们发现，对决策的高度信心会导致决策后神经处理的惊人调制，从而放大了确认性证据的整合，同时消除了对矛盾性证据的处理。我们的结论是，信心塑造了一种对一致信息的选择性神经门控，降低了根据新信息改变主意的可能性。信心在塑造证据积累准确性方面的核心作用表明，元认知干预可能有助于缓解这种普遍存在的认知偏差。
