confirmation-bias-not-self-fulfilling-prophecy
IN premise — summaries/2026/08/24/wiki-Confirmation_bias.md
Created 2026-08-25T02:58:48+00:00
Confirmation bias (biased information processing) is distinct from the self-fulfilling prophecy (expectations changing behavior to produce the expected outcome).
Summary
This matters because the two failure modes call for completely different fixes: if someone is just filtering what they already see, you need to broaden their information sources, but if their expectations are actually reshaping their behavior to produce the outcome, you need to change the behavior itself. Conflating them leads a system to apply the wrong correction and waste effort solving a problem that isn't the real one.