From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bias is a term used to describe a tendency or preference towards a particular perspective, ideology or result, when the tendency interferes with the ability to be impartial, unprejudiced, or objective.^[1]. In other words, bias is generally seen as a 'one-sided' perspective. The term biased refers to a person or group who is judged to exhibit bias. It is used to describe an attitude, judgment, or behavior that is influenced by a prejudice. Bias can be unconscious or conscious in awareness. Having a bias is part of a normal development. Labeling someone as biased in some regard implies they need a greater or more flexible perspective in that area, or that they need to consider more deeply the context.

In psychology

In psychology, cognitive bias is bias based on factors related to the brain as an information processor. One type of cognitive bias is confirmation bias, the tendency to interpret new information in such a way that confirms one's prior beliefs, even to the extreme of denial, ignoring information that conflicts with one's prior beliefs. The fundamental attribution error, also known as "correspondence bias", is one example of such bias, in which people tend to explain others' behavior in terms of personality, whereas they tend to explain their own behavior in terms of the situation.^[2][3]

In statistics

In statistics, there are several types of bias:

• Selection bias, where there is an error in choosing the individuals or groups to take part in a scientific study. It includes sampling bias, in which some members of the population are more likely to be included than others. Spectrum bias consists of evaluating the ability of a diagnostic test in a biased group of patients, which leads to an overestimate of the sensitivity and specificity of the test.
• The bias of an estimator is the difference between an estimator's expectation and the true value of the parameter being estimated. Omitted-variable bias is the bias that appears in estimates of parameters in a regression analysis when the assumed specification is incorrect, in that it omits an independent variable that should be in the model.
• In statistical hypothesis testing, a test is said to be unbiased when the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis exceeds the significance level when the alternative is true and is less than or equal to the significance level when the null hypothesis is true.
• Systematic bias or systemic bias are external influences that may affect the accuracy of statistical measurements.
• Data-snooping bias comes from the misuse of data mining techniques.

Other aspects

• Cultural: interpreting and judging phenomena in terms particular to one's own culture.
• Ethnic or racial: racism, regionalism and tribalism.
• Geographical: describing a dispute as it is conducted in one country, when the dispute is framed differently elsewhere.
• Inductive bias in machine learning
• Media: real or perceived bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media, in the selection of which events will be reported and how they are covered
• Gender: including sexism and heteronormativity.
• Linguistic: bias, favoring certain languages
• News bias
• Political: bias in favor of or against a particular political party, philosophy, policy or candidate.
• Corporate: bias in favor of a business.
• Advertising: bias with observations motivated for selling an opinion rather than using objectivity.
• Sociological: bias in favor of a society's ideals. bias for groups needs/wants.
• Entertainment: bias in favor of entertaining an audience
• Personal: bias for personal gain.
• Religious: bias for or against religion, faith or beliefs;
• Sensationalist: favoring the exceptional over the ordinary. This includes emphasizing, distorting, or fabricating exceptional news to boost commercial ratings.
• Scientific (including anti-scientific and scientific skepticism): favoring (or disfavoring) a scientist, inventor, or theory for non-scientific reasons. This can also include excessive favoring (or disfavoring) prevalent scientific opinion, if in doing so, other viewpoints are no longer being treated neutrally.

See also

Psychology portal

• List of cognitive biases
• Scholarly method
• Source criticism
• Weasel word

References

External links

From Wikiquote

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Prejudice. (Discuss)

Bias is a standard point of view or personal prejudice. All information and points of view have some form of bias. A person is generally said to be biased if the person's output is influenced by inner biases, to the extent that one's views is not subjectively considered neutral or objective.

Sourced

• Can science ever be immune from experiments conceived out of prejudices and stereotypes, conscious or not? (Which is not to suggest that it cannot in discrete areas identify and locate verifiable phenemonena in nature.) I await the study that says lesbians have a region of the hypothalamus that resembles straight men and I would not be surprised if, at this very moment, some scientist somewhere is studying brains of deceased Asians to see if they have an enlarged "math region" of the brain.
  • Kay Diaz, Z, December 1992.

• "Both social and biosocial factors are necessary to interpret crosscultural studies, with the general proviso that one's research interest determines which elements, in what combinations, are significant for the provision of understanding."
  • Gilbert Herdt, "Bisexuality and the Causes of Homosexuality: The Case of the Sambia"

• This is the essence of the problem. To Dan Rather and to a lot of other powerful members of the chattering class, that which is right of center is conservative. That which is left of center is middle of the road. No wonder they can't recognize their own bias.
  • Bernard Goldberg, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, 2001

• Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices.
  • Nicholas D. Kristof, Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal (New York Times, 27 May 2009)

External Links

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Bias

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From LoveToKnow 1911

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Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek Βίας (Bias).

Proper noun

Wikipedia has an article on:

Bias of Priene

Wikipedia

Bias

1. One of the Seven Sages of Greece from Priene living in the 6th century BC.

Translations

Anagrams

• Anagrams of abis
• isba

From Wikispecies

Taxonavigation

Main Page
Cladus: Eukaryota
Supergroup: Unikonta
Cladus: Opisthokonta
Regnum: Animalia
Subregnum: Eumetazoa
Cladus: Bilateria
Cladus: Nephrozoa
Cladus: Deuterostomia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Infraphylum: Gnathostomata
Superclassis: Tetrapoda
Classis: Aves
Subclassis: Carinatae
Infraclassis: Neornithes
Parvclassis: Neognathae
Ordo: Passeriformes
Subordo: Passeri
Parvordo: Corvida
Superfamilia: Corvoidea
Familia: Platysteiridae
Genus: Bias
Species: B. flammulatus - B. musicus

Name

Bias Lesson, 1831

Reference

Traite d'Ornithologie livr.5 p.385