- Confirmation bias is our tendency to favour information that confirms our existing beliefs while rejecting information that challenges them. As researchers, this behaviour can sometimes lead us to downplay results that don’t ‘feel’ correct.
- A reverse hypothesis involves recognising our expectations and designing our research to disprove them, helping to reduce confirmation bias.
Example: If I expect most of our customers to be confident using a smartphone, I might design my research to test the hypothesis: "Our customers are not confident with smartphones."