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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Getting into arguments with strangers online or family members at the dinner table can feel a bit like debating with a brick wall. We are probably all guilty of feeling like we are right, even if we don’t have all the facts. According to a recent psychology study, people tend to assume that they have all of the information that they need to make a decision or support their position–even if they don’t. This phenomenon dubbed the “illusion of information adequacy” is detailed in a study published October 9 in the journal PLoS ONE.

“Interpersonal conflict is on the rise, driving increases in anger, anxiety, and general stress,” Angus Fletcher, a study co-author and narrative theorist and neurophysiologist at the Ohio State University, tells Popular Science. “We wanted to look into those misunderstandings and see if they could be mitigated.”

The team calls this belief that we are correct–even when we don’t have all of the information–the illusion of adequacy.

Fletcher describes the illusion of adequacy as, “The less that our brain knows, the more confident it is that it knows all it needs to know. This makes us prone to thinking that we have all the crucial facts about a decision, leaping to confident conclusions and decisive judgments, when we are missing necessary information.”

[Source]: Popular Science [popsci.com]

[Journal Reference]: The illusion of information adequacy [doi.org]

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