"Source Bias" and Confidence Men

[Alan Mendelson]

Bingo. It's pretty well accepted that we are biased towards our own opinions.

Now here's the weird part. Since the ratio of personal opinions to right and wrong opinions is a 1 to 1 correlation, any particular thought is no more likely than any other to be correct as a result of it being ours. That having been said, everyone favors their own opinions right or wrong. Wow heavy mind bender!

Now let's tackle consensus bias. Since beliefs that are pleasant are more likely to be accepted, would the argument that most people believe a certain way be more likely to make that belief true or false?

You gave me a sleepless night with this one, Frank. Unless you have a split personality YOU cannot be your own "information source."

Let's look at your original two-part question:

Now to keep the conversation going:

1. What single informational source do we think would be the one we are most likely to be positively biased towards???

2. And (If you got the answer to #1) what types of people do we think would be less susceptible to this type of bias, high IQ or low IQ???

~FK

An informational source must be an outside influence. It cannot be your own imagination, unless of course you are Eve listening to one of your many other personalities who are trying to tell you how to act or what to believe. An informational source must be someone else or something else.