Information Bias

What is information bias?

In judgment and decision-making, information bias is seeking or valuing information even when its possible answers would not change the decision. In Baron, Beattie and Hershey’s experiments (1988), participants valued diagnostic questions even when no answer would change the hypothesis used as a basis for action.

Example of information bias

Imagine a buyer ordering another product report after deciding that, whatever the report says, they will choose the same option. If the purpose is to select a product, the extra report has no decision value. It may feel like more careful work without changing the choice.

How to check for it

A practical check is to state what you would do after each possible answer before collecting more information. The result concerns decision usefulness; information can still have value for learning or other goals. It is also distinct from information overload.

Information bias vs. information overload

Information overload concerns difficulty handling the amount or complexity of information. Information bias, in this decision-making sense, concerns wanting information that will not change the action. The problem can occur even with one extra question.

In epidemiology, “information bias” has a different meaning: systematic errors in measurement or classification. The definition here concerns unnecessary information seeking.