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Congruence Bias

Bias occurs due to people's overreliance on directly testing a given hypothesis as well as neglecting indirect testing.

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Origin

Jonathan Baron at the University of Pennsylvania formally named the bias in a 1988 paper co-authored with Jane Beattie and John Hershey, building on Peter Wason's classic 2-4-6 task from 1960, in which subjects reliably sought only confirming evidence for their hypotheses.

Updated February 22, 2026