Current Research

Mechanisms of Selective Exposure

Research on information seeking has demonstrated that individuals often preferentially seek out information that is consistent with their pre-existing beliefs or attitudes or a decision they have just made. There are a number of reasons why individuals may engage in this behavior: defensive processing; pre-existing preferences; positive hypothesis testing; or affective reinforcement. Across a number of studies we've demonstrated that individuals engage in selective exposure following predictions, even completely arbitrary predictions, primarily because individuals enjoy seeing indications that they might be right. I am currently conducting some research with individuals with brain lesions to provide further evidence for this explanation of selective exposure.

Desirability and Selective Exposure

Consistent with the aforementioned research, we've demonstrated that desirability, independent of choice, is sufficient to trigger biased information seeking, leading to increased confidence that the desirable outcome will occur (also known as the desirability bias).