Selective perception

Abstract: Dearborn and Simon's evidence of departmental bias in problem identification has prompted a scholarly concern about managers' information-processing capabilities. Through measures of managers' entire work histories, their belief structures, and three indexes of information processing in an ill-structured decision situation, the present research conceptually replicated and extended Dearborn and Simon's early work.’ Contrary to prevailing belief about managers' information-processing limitations, the managers in this investigation did not emerge as simple-minded information processors.

Abstract: ▪ Abstract Do people assimilate new information in an efficient and unbiased manner—that is, do they update prior beliefs in accordance with Bayes' rule? Or are they selective in the way that they gather and absorb new information? Although many classic studies in political science and psychology contend that people resist discordant information, more recent research has tended to call the selective perception hypothesis into question. We synthesize the literatures on biased assimilation and belief polarization using a formal model that encompasses both Bayesian and biased learning. The analysis reveals (a) the conditions under which these phenomena may be consistent with Bayesian learning, (b) the methodological inadequacy of certain research designs that fail to control for preferences or prior information, and (c) the limited support that exists for the more extreme variants of the selective perception hypothesis.