# behav: a kind of pulsatile motivation: believing is right even when it's wrong

<< people generally ignore new information that counters their beliefs, even though doing so costs them financially >>

<< It’s as if you don’t hear the voices in your head telling you that you’re wrong, even if you lose money >> Stefano Palminteri

Jessica Hamzelou. We ignore what doesn’t fit with our biases – even if it costs us. Sept 4, 2017

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2146124-we-ignore-what-doesnt-fit-with-our-biases-even-if-it-costs-us/

<< While the investigation of decision-making biases has a long history in economics and psychology, learning biases have been much less systematically investigated. This is surprising as most of the choices we deal with in everyday life are recurrent, thus allowing learning to occur and therefore influencing future decision-making >>

AA << show that the valence of an outcome biases both factual and counterfactual learning. When considering factual and counterfactual learning together, it appears that people tend to preferentially take into account information that confirms their current choice >>

Palminteri S, Lefebvre G, et al. Confirmation bias in human reinforcement learning: Evidence from counterfactual feedback processing. PLoS Comput Biol 2017; 13(8): e1005684. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005684

http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005684