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psychlotron.org.uk
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Name of resource: Confirmatory bias activities
Author(s): Aidan sammons
Specification: AQA-B
Details: About a lesson's worth of activities on the confirmatory bias.  I use it as an initial lesson on
my course to get students into the idea of thinking critically but it could be used at any point, really.
Two main activities.  The first is a demonstration of 'psychic powers' devised by Barry and Stuart (requires an
Internet-connected computer).  This is used to show how easily people's biases can be exploited (the students are
so locked into the idea that the video is influencing someone's answers that it does not occur to them that the
person's answers might be influencing what appears on the video).  The second is a series of situations that are 
often taken as evidence of psychic powers that students are invited to analyse in terms of the confirmatory bias.