What is the term for the tendency to focus on information that confirms our preconceptions?

The tendency to focus on information that confirms our preconceptions is known as confirmation bias. This cognitive bias leads individuals to favor information that aligns with their existing beliefs while disregarding or minimizing evidence that contradicts those beliefs. Confirmation bias plays a significant role in how we gather and interpret information, often reinforcing existing viewpoints, and can be observed in various situations from everyday decision-making to the formation of opinions on controversial topics.

Understanding this concept is crucial because it highlights the challenges of objective reasoning and decision-making. In contexts such as scientific inquiry, critical thinking, and personal relationships, awareness of confirmation bias can help individuals seek a more balanced and evidence-based understanding of complex issues. Other options such as metacognition refer to thinking about one's own thinking processes, insight pertains to a sudden understanding of a problem, and divergent thinking involves generating creative ideas by exploring multiple possible solutions, none of which describes the specific tendency to maintain pre-existing beliefs like confirmation bias does.