Elizabeth Thornton Quotes

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

Even moderate confirmation bias can result in reality dysmorphia.

Open-mindedness is considered to be a virtue. But, strictly speaking, it cannot occur. A new experience must be redacted into old categories. We cannot handle each event freshly in its own right. If we did so, of what use would past experience be?

There's no way to remove the observer - us - from our perceptions of the world.

In all our perceptions, from vision to hearing, to the pictures we build of people's character, our unconscious mind starts from whatever objective data is available to us - usually spotty - and helps to shape and construct the more complete picture we consciously perceive.

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought

It's human nature to make the complex manageable and determine things that fit your conclusions. That's bias.

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

Look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.... Without knowing it, we are coloring everything, putting our spin on it all.

People hear what they want and expect to hear, not what is said.

Policy is formed by preconceptions, by long implanted biases. When information is relayed to policy-makers, they respond in terms of what is already inside their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood.

What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it. The moment we want to disbelieve anything we have previously believed we suddenly discover not only that there is a mass of evidence against it but that this evidence was starting us in the face all the time.

We all have mental models: the lens through which we see the world that drive our responses to everything we experience. Being aware of your mental models is key to being objective.

All of us show bias when it comes to what information we take in. We typically focus on anything that agrees with the outcome we want.

Everything you see is filtered through your visual system (imperfect) and your brain (also imperfect, despite what your mom told you). Witness testimony is the worst kind of evidence in science.

When we describe what the other person is really like, I suppose we often picture what we want. We look through the prism of our need.

We don't know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don't always appreciate their fragility.

Except for some effects that I attribute mostly to age, my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues.

Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.

If you're saying something that people don't want to hear or accept, a significant proportion of them will reply with hostility. Not because they know the facts, or because they have researched it themselves, but because they're so psychologically involved in believing good news that they will oppose it with a reflex.

We historians are increasingly using experimental psychology to understand the way we act. It is becoming very clear that our ability to evaluate risk is hedged by all sorts of cognitive biases. It's a miracle that we get anything right.

It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept.

In intelligence you can justify almost anything you want to if you go about it with enough zeal and effort which is what happened.

Men can reason themselves into almost any sort of opinion if they are so inclined.