Nudges to Mitigate Confirmation Bias during Web Search on Debated Topics: Support vs. Manipulation

When people use web search engines to find information on debated topics, the search results they encounter can influence opinion formation and practical decision-making with potentially far-reaching consequences for the individual and society. However, current web search engines lack support for information-seeking strategies that enable...

Searching for the Whole Truth: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Humility to Boost Better Search on Debated Topics

We often use search engines when seeking information for opinion-forming and decision-making on debated topics. However, searching for resources on debated topics to gain well-rounded knowledge is cognitively demanding, leaving us vulnerable to cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias. This can impede well-informed decision-making, and on...

A Checklist to Combat Cognitive Biases in Crowdsourcing

Recent research has demonstrated that cognitive biases such as the confirmation bias or the anchoring effect can negatively affect the quality of crowdsourced data. In practice, however, such biases go unnoticed unless specifically assessed or controlled for. Task requesters need to ensure that task workflow and design choices do not trigger...

This Item Might Reinforce Your Opinion: Obfuscation and Labeling of Search Results to Mitigate Confirmation Bias

During online information search, users tend to select search results that confirm previous beliefs and ignore competing possibilities. This systematic pattern in human behavior is known as confirmation bias. In this paper, we study the effect of obfuscation (i.e., hiding the result unless the user clicks on it) with warning labels and the...