Confirmation as coping with competition

ABSTRACT

Confirmation is a widespread tendency to seek, use, interpret or remember information in such a way as to corroborate one’s hypothesis. We review various conceptions of confirmation and classify them as a function of whether they depict this phenomenon as a cognitive failure, a form of motivational prioritisation, or a pragmatic strategy. Then, we note that such a systematic and pervasive phenomenon must be a central mechanism of human activity serving an important and specific social function. We propose that confirmation is an adaptive mechanism that serves the function of coping with competitive situations. This general proposition is broken down into three implications: Confirmation occurs to a larger extent (1) when there is competition, (2) when competition is threatening, (3) when competition threatens one’s feelings of competence. A research programme is reported to illustrate each of these implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Confirmation
• competence
• threat
• competition
• coping

Notes

¹ It is important to note that performance goals have been divided into performance-approach goals (the desire to outperform others) and performance-avoidance goals (the desire not to be outperformed by others; e.g., Elliot & McGregor, 2001). In this article, we focus on competition and competitive goals; we are therefore concerned with performance-approach goals. However, to increase readability and fluency, we will use the term “performance goals” to refer to “performance-approach goals”, i.e., competitive goals.

Additional information

Funding

The preparation of this work has been supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.