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The study explored users' tendency of confirmation bias when processing congenial vs. uncongenial electronic-word-of-mouth (e-WOM) about mystery fictions, a hedonic product category with strong experience and hedonic characters.

A two-stage judgment approach was employed where the participants were asked to judge a set of mystery novels twice: one before, and another after they were exposed to positive and negative e-WOM. The first-stage judgment established two favored and two disfavored titles by each participant. They were then asked to read six consumer reviews – three positive and three negative – for each of the four titles. The procedures created four review evaluation situations: two congruent and two incongruent, which allowed the authors to assess the participants' perceptions of congenial and uncongenial reviews and their rating adjustments of the titles. Participants' involvement in mystery novels was also measured to test its moderating effect on confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias in the evaluation of e-WOM was observed and reinforced by the user's involvement in the genre. Congenial reviews were perceived to be significantly more credible, better reflect the intrinsic value of a title and less subjectively motivated than uncongenial reviews. Furthermore, after exposure to equal amount of positive and negative e-WOM, an asymmetrical adjustment of final rating of the titles was observed. A significantly greater downward adjustment was observed for disfavored than favored titles. Stronger positive confirmation bias was also observed in the evaluation of WOM.

Previous studies on e-WOM have shown conflicting findings on the relative efficacy of positive vs. negative reviews. By introducing the factor of prior attitudes, the study demonstrated that whether WOM is consistent with an individual's prior attitude, rather than the valences of WOM in itself, determines its persuasiveness. Thus, it established the confirmation bias in users' processing of e-WOM. The finding highlights the importance for marketers to establish a positive initial impression, which, as the findings demonstrated, helps alleviate the damages caused by negative WOM.

This is the first study that has ever attempted to study the effect of confirmation bias during the users' processing of e-WOM in an experimental setting. By having the participants judge the books before and after exposure to congenial and uncongenial e-WOM, the authors were able to establish the link between the users' prior commitment to a book and their subsequent judgment of both the titles and the e-WOM.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-01-2020-0026

In this paper, the authors investigate the impact of the confirmation bias on returns, expectations and hedging of optimistic and pessimistic traders in the cryptocurrencies, commodities and stock markets before and during COVID-19 periods.

The authors investigate the impact of the confirmation bias on the estimated returns and the expectations of optimistic and pessimistic traders by employing the financial stochastic model with confirmation bias. Indeed, the authors compute the optimal portfolio weights, the optimal hedge ratios and the hedging effectiveness.

The authors find that without confirmation bias, during the two sub periods, the expectations of optimistic and pessimistic trader’s seem to convergence toward zero. However, when confirmation bias is particularly strong, the average distance between these two expectations are farer. The authors further show that, with and without confirmation bias, the optimal weights (the optimal hedge ratios) are found to be lower (higher) for all pairs of financial market during the COVID-19 period as compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. The authors also document that the stronger the confirmation bias is, the lower the optimal weight and the higher the optimal hedge ratio. Moreover, results reveal that the values of the optimal hedge ratio for optimistic and pessimistic traders affected or not by the confirmation bias are higher during the COVID-19 period compared to the estimates for the pre-COVID period and inversely for the optimal hedge ratios and the hedging effectiveness index. Indeed, either for optimists or pessimists, the presence of confirmation bias leads to higher optimal hedge ratio, higher optimal weights and higher hedging effectiveness index.

The findings of the study provided additional evidence for investors, portfolio managers and financial analysts to exploit confirmation bias to make an optimal portfolio allocation especially during COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 periods. Moreover, the findings of this study might be useful for investors as they help them to make successful investment decision in potential hedging strategies.

First, this is the first scientific work that conducts a stochastic analysis about the impact of emotional biases on the estimated returns and the expectations of optimists and pessimists in cryptocurrency and commodity markets. Second, the originality of this study stems from the fact that the authors make a comparative analysis of hedging behavior across different markets and different periods with and without the impact of confirmation bias. Third, this paper pays attention to the impact of confirmation bias on the expectations and hedging behavior in cryptocurrencies and commodities markets in extremely stressful periods such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

To describe the implicit epistemic flaw of “confirmation bias” and to illustrate and evaluate the threats to qualitative research trustworthiness from that bias.

The article overviews evidence and analysis from a wide range of disciplines. The adverse effect of three varieties of confirmation bias is described in some detail in illustrative examples.

It is argued that the threats from the bias go to the heart of the research. A subsequent article summarizes and critiques counter-arguments.

Discussions and illustrations of varieties of confirmation bias can increase awareness of the unwitting bias and reduce its influence.

The bias not only threatens the trustworthiness of academic and other professional research but also underpins much ideological extremism, the effectiveness of post-truth politics and inter- and intra-group conflict. These are directly discussed in the article.

The article extends and enriches descriptions of threats to the trustworthiness of qualitative from confirmation bias. Such threats are inadequately recognized in many qualitative research arenas. It identifies a previously unrecognized variety of confirmation bias: hollow citations.

Knowing your why is a powerful thing. As school librarians, an integral part of our mission is to ensure that students leave their K-12 education as information and media literate members of our society. In order for that to happen, students must also exit their K-12 years understanding how implicit and confirmation bias play a role in the way they view the world. That’s part of the basis of our why: (i) School librarians are critical, necessary, and integral to ensuring we graduate students who are not only college and career ready but also have a deep understanding of how bias affects perception when it comes to being information and media literate; and (ii) School libraries are the epicenter of information and media literacy instruction. Because school librarians have the expertise and the background, they are a first line of defense in the broadening landscape of misinformation and a key player in combating fake news. Additionally, school librarians are uniquely poised to assist students in understanding bias – in particular confirmation and implicit biases that may affect the student’s search for information. This chapter will address the power of the school librarian in an ever-evolving information landscape.

This study documents that an outcome-favorable bias is greater when the quantity of information describing a balanced tax-decision context is substantially increased. Second, the study demonstrates that an outcome-favorable bias can be offset by the use of principles-based ethical standards. Specifically, we examine the effect of AICPA Code of Conduct Section 54 for integrity and Rule 102-6 for advocacy. Students volunteered to participate in this study examining the manner in which accounting novices initially process principles-based standards. Prior studies using student subjects in an audit setting have found that principles-based standards were effective only when students had high levels of moral reasoning (Herron & Gilbertson, 2004), and rules-based technical standards had no impact on student subjects when making financial adjustments (Pflugrath, Martinov-Bennie, & Chen, 2007). If professional standards increasingly rely on principles-based standards, then understanding the impact of such standards on future entrants into the profession would provide guidance in the creation and implementation of future standards, as well as assist educators in the development of accounting curricula. We extend the pattern of past research to a tax setting and show that tax-saving recommendations are a function of the presence of a professional standard and the level of contextual detail.

Surveyor variability has a significant impact on the accuracy and reliability of house condition surveys. Reports on one particular cognitive bias that surveyors may use when undertaking house condition surveys – the confirmation bias. Two experiments are conducted to investigate the confirmation bias. The experiments seem to indicate that the confirmation bias does have the potential to have an impact on condition survey decision making and therefore to contribute to surveyor variability. Methods of dealing with the bias are discussed; particularly the potential application of expert systems alongside hand‐held data‐capture devices.

Decision-making biases play decisive roles not only in entrepreneurs’ decisions but also in the fate of entrepreneurial businesses. While the extant literature in this regard is relatively rich, it has predominantly focused on certain biases like overconfidence and overoptimism at the expense of other possibly influential biases, which could influence entrepreneurial decisions. Thus, to address this serious research gap, this paper aims to explore four of the less-researched biases of escalation of commitment, the illusion of control, confirmation and the belief in the law of small numbers in entrepreneurial decisions.

By taking a qualitative approach, the data for this study were collected through face-to-face interviews with 19 Iranian habitual (experienced) entrepreneurs running small businesses and analyzed by a qualitative thematic analysis.

According to the results, the environmental uncertainty, the reluctance to lose face and the experiences of previous failures contributed to the escalation of commitment, while disregard for external factors beyond one’s control caused the illusion of control, factors like prior successful businesses in the same sector, looking for resorts to manage uncertainty, along with the decision to exploit opportunities resulted in the confirmation bias, while the expenses of conducting sweeping pilot tests in the market and the reluctance to reveal a business secret to the competitors were the main contributors of the belief in the law of small numbers.

This study is a pioneer in scrutinizing four less-researched but important biases in entrepreneurs and, thus extending the line of research in this regard.

Online reviews in online health communities (OHCs) have been a vital information source for patients. The extant literature on the bias effects of helpful reviews mainly concentrates on traditional e-commerce, whereas research on OHCs is still rare. Thus, based on the heuristic-systematic model (HSM), this research explores how two unique reviewer characteristics in OHCs, which may induce attribution bias and confirmation bias, affect review helpfulness and how review length moderates these relationships.

This research analyzed 130,279 reviews collected from haodf.com (one of the representative OHCs in China) by adopting the negative binomial regression to test our research model.

The results indicate that reviewer cured status positively influences review helpfulness, whereas reviewer recommendation source negatively affects review helpfulness. Moreover, the effects of the two reviewer cues on review helpfulness will be weaker for longer reviews.

First, as one of the initial attempts, the current study investigates the effects of confirmation bias and attribution bias of online reviews in OHCs by exploring the effects of two unique reviewer characteristics on review helpfulness. Second, the weakening moderating effects of review length on the two bias effects provide empirical support for the theoretical arguments of the HSM in OHCs.

This paper aims to identify, examine, and present an empirical research design of behavioral finance of potential investors during Covid-19.

A well-structured questionnaire was designed; a survey was conducted among potential investors using convenience sampling, and 200 valid responses were collected. The research work uses multiple regression and discriminant function analysis to evaluate the influence of cognitive factors on the financial decision-making of investors.

Recency and familiarity bias are proven to have the highest significant impact on the financial decisions of investors followed by confirmation bias. Overconfidence bias had a negligible effect on the decision-making process of the respondents and found insignificant.

Covid-19 is a temporary phase that may lead to changes in financial behavior and investors’ decisions in the near future.

The paper will help academicians, scholars, analysts, practitioners, policymakers and firms dealing with capital markets to execute their job responsibilities with respect to the cognitive bias in terms of taking financial decisions.

The present investigation attempts to fill the gap in the literature on the intended topic because it is evident from literature on the chosen subject that no study has been undertaken to evaluate the impact of cognitive biases on financial behavior of investors during Covid-19.

This paper aims to identify psychological factors that influence people to be involved in Ponzi and pyramid schemes.

A psychological approach to finance or behavioural finance is applied in this research because of the assumption that human beings are not always rational. The sample consisted of 98 investors in 11 cities in Indonesia who were or had invested in an investment program with a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. The snowball sampling technique was applied.

The conclusion is that optimism (emotional bias), confirmation bias, representativeness bias, framing bias and overconfidence (cognitive bias) positively influenced investment decisions related to Ponzi and pyramid schemes.

The novelty aspect of this research is the implementation of a behavioural finance perspective to answer and express the fascinating phenomenon of Ponzi and pyramid investment schemes.