Combating Myside Bias in Scientific Thinking: A Special Challenge for the Gifted

ABSTRACT

Myside bias, a form of confirmation bias, is a major impediment to scientific thinking. It results in scientists, potential scientists, and consumers of science drawing conclusions that do not follow from data but rather that follow from prior scientific, ideological beliefs. Gifted people are at least as susceptible to these biases as are other people. We propose in this article a set of techniques for combating such bias. In particular, we suggest that gifted (and other) individuals seeking to draw scientific conclusions put themselves in the place of various individuals involved in scientific refereeing—in particular, of reviewers with varying prior predispositions (e.g., reviewers with different paradigmatic worldviews and reviewers who are picayune critics) and journal editors. Through these techniques, gifted individuals may spare themselves embarrassments that they might otherwise encounter, not despite, but even because of their own superior intellects.

KEYWORDS:

• confirmation bias
• disconfirmation
• foolishness
• giftedness
• myside bias
• scientific hypotheses
• scientific reasoning
• teaching science

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This fact has led to an interesting paradox, called the raven paradox, whereby one’s spotting a black raven helps to increase belief that all ravens are black, but spotting a non-black non-raven, such as a blade of green grass, does not tend to increase certainty that all ravens are black, despite the fact that “All ravens are black” and “All non-ravens are non-black” are logically equivalent statements (Hempel, 1945a, 1945b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert J. Sternberg

Robert J. Sternberg is Professor of Psychology at Cornell University and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. His PhD is from Stanford and he holds 13 honorary doctorates. He is a past winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Psychology and has won the William James and James McKeen Cattell Awards from the Association for Psychological Science. According to Google Scholar, he has been cited over 228,000 times and has an h index of 232. His latest books are Adaptive Intelligence (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and (with Judith Glück) Wisdom: The Psychology of Wise Thoughts, Words, and Deeds (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Email: [email protected]

Mehdi Ghahremani

Mehdi Ghahremani (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Foundations, Mississippi State University, where he teaches and studies human development to promote understanding of differences of people and analyzing effective and productive modes of thinking such as critical thinking, design thinking, and wisdom. He received his PhD in Educational Studies, with a focus on Gifted, Creative, and Talented Studies from Purdue University. He is a mixed-methods researcher certified in quantitative and qualitative inquiry. His research interests center around creative thinking and team creativity; STEM education and STEM-talent development, psychology of design thinking, and wisdom. [email protected]

Hoda Ehsan

Hoda Ehsan is currently Director of Quadrivium Engineering, Design and Computer Science at The Hill School, Pottstown, Pennsylvania. She holds a PhD in Engineering Education from Purdue University. Her research interests include exploring the engineering learning of young children, including those on the autism spectrum, and ways to make connections between in-school engineering learning and out-of-school learning. She is also the founder of Sunny Skies Academy, which provides educational services to children from vulnerable populations. [email protected]