
Confirmation Bias in Investigations
In a 2012 paper titled “The Psychology of Bias: Understanding and Eliminating Bias in Investigations (Oppenheimer, B.A. (2012)), Amy Oppenheimer defines confirmation bias as, “. . . the tendency to bolster a hypothesis by seeking consistent evidence while minimizing inconsistent evidence. It involves unconscious information processing rather than deliberate case building. Once a hypothesis is formed, people tend to search for information that supports it. For investigators, t