Cognitive dissonance is a mental conflict that occurs when a person holds two contradictory beliefs, causing psychological stress. To minimize this dissonance, people adapt to confirmation bias by avoiding contradictory information and seeking evidence confirming their beliefs.

Cognitive dissonance is described as the mental disturbance people feel when their beliefs and actions are inconsistent and contradictory, ultimately encouraging some change (often either in their beliefs or actions) to align better and reduce this dissonance.[1] Relevant items of information include peoples' actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when an action or idea is psychologically inconsistent with the other, people do all in their power to change either so that they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.[1]

Confirmation bias (also confirmatory bias, myside bias,[a] or congeniality bias[2]) is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.[3] People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is insuperable for most people, but they can manage it, for example, by education and training in critical thinking skills.

A series of psychological experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another proposal is that people show confirmation bias because they are pragmatically assessing the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.

Flawed decisions due to confirmation bias have been found in a wide range of political, organizational, financial and scientific contexts. These biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. For example, confirmation bias produces systematic errors in scientific research based on inductive reasoning (the gradual accumulation of supportive evidence). Similarly, a police detective may identify a suspect early in an investigation, but then may only seek confirming rather than disconfirming evidence. A medical practitioner may prematurely focus on a particular disorder early in a diagnostic session, and then seek only confirming evidence. In social media, confirmation bias is amplified by the use of filter bubbles, or "algorithmic editing", which display to individuals only information they are likely to agree with, while excluding opposing views.

Scientific method refers to ways to get facts, correct errors and mistakes, and test theories.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that scientific method is: "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century". It is observation, measurement, and experiment, plus the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.[1]

A scientist gathers empirical and measurable evidence, and uses sound reasoning.[2]

Scientists try to let reality speak for itself. They support a theory when its predictions are confirmed, and challenge it when its predictions prove false. Scientific researchers offer hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experiments to test these hypotheses. Since big theories cannot be tested directly, it is done by testing predictions derived from the theory. These steps must be repeatable, to guard against mistake or confusion by any particular experimenter.

Scientific inquiry is generally intended to be as objective as possible. To reduce bias, scientists publish their work, and so share data and methods with other scientists.

Sources from Wikipedia.

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