Motivated reasoning is what turns research into an alibi. Once the team is attached to a direction, confirmation bias helps them gather, trust, and present the evidence that keeps that direction alive.

pretty much

your brain hates blank space, so it fills it with the nearest sample: you

Raymond Nickerson’s sweeping 1998 review of confirmation bias across dozens of fields shows that the problem is not stupidity or dishonesty.

it’s like asking someone about their gym routine while they’re wearing clean sneakers in daylight

annoyingly, no

asking helps, but the chapter is warning you about the gap between what feels true and what survives contact

You tell yourself you run research to find out what users want. That is not always what is happening. Sometimes the question is already answered before the study…

yep. confirmation bias protects the story is the trap door

then it shows up as what biased research looks like

Google launched Google+ in June 2011 on the back of internal research.

listen to what people say, then watch what they actually do

treat a confident future promise as a hypothesis, not a receipt

and if a choice only works for informed, patient, caffeinated people, treat that as a bug

that’s the series tbh

design psychology is mostly noticing the human nonsense before it ships

deal. hydrate first