Provenance Bias

The cognitive bias codex from wikipedia (CC-BY-SA 4.0); if you want to print it out so it’s legible and useful, print the original over four letter-sized pages and paste them together (my printout is taped, tellingly perhaps, over my rarely-used TV). The model was developed by John Manoogian III and refined by Buster Benson; the online version includes links by TillmanR to the wikipedia articles explaining each bias. The adjective provenance refers to the source of something, where it came from. So provenance bias refers to the human propensity to prejudge something based on where it came from — who said it, who wrote it, who reported it, or what its source was. It’s an important concept, I think. Related to our tendency to believe what we want to believe, this bias somewhat explains the behaviour of cults and religious extremist groups, our resistance to exposing ourselves to new ideas and perspectives, our aversion to complexity, and our intolerance of difference, uncertainty and…