Description

Expectation bias has been described in research cited in a U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) aircraft incident report as “a psychological concept associated with perception and decision making that can allow a mistaken assessment to persist.” (Bhattacherjee 2001) Expectation bias, and the related confirmation basis, can cause a person’s incorrect belief to persist despite available contradictory evidence.

In A Practical Guide for Improving Flight Path Monitoring, the Active Pilot Monitoring Working Group said that “individuals are vulnerable to thinking they see what they expect to see … . Inattention blindness, change blindness and expectation bias are not manifestations of laziness, but simply are part of the way everyone’s brain processes information.”