Cognitive Bias

The ISO/IEC 17020 and 17025 standards both include requirements for impartiality and the freedom from bias. Meeting these requirements for implicit cognitive bias is not a simple matter. In this article, we address these international standards, specifically focusing on evaluating and mitigating the risk to impartiality, and quality assurance checks, so as to meet accreditation program requirements. We cover their meaning to management as well as to practitioners, addressing how these issues of impartiality and bias relate to forensic work, and how one can effectively evaluate and mitigate those risks. We then elaborate on specific quality assurance policies and checks, and identify when corrective action may be appropriate. These measures will not only serve to meet ISO/IEC 17020 and 17025 requirements, but also enhance forensic work and decision-making.

Tr: Son yıllarda akademisyenler ve alanda çalışanlar tarafından, adli bilimsel inceleme ve raporlama esnasında sürece etki eden ön yargıdan kaynaklı hataların giderilmesine yönelik çaba sarf edilmektedir. Bireyin değerlendirme mekanizmasındaki sistematik bir sapma modeli olarak ifade edilen bilişsel ön yargı, adli bilimlerin birçok dalında olduğu gibi Adli Belge İncelemede de, uzmanların, adalet mekanizmasının ve adli vakaya taraf olanların karşılaştığı büyük bir problem olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Bu amaçla uluslararası literatürde adli bilimler alanında -bilhassa Adli Belge İnceleme alanındaki- ön yargı problemini ortaya koyan mevcut araştırmalar ve bu araştırmalar sonucunda getirilen çözüm önerileri değerlendirilmiştir. Literatürdeki çalışmaların değerlendirilmesiyle, bireyin kararının mevcut görevi ile bağlantısı olmayan bağlamsal bilgilerden etkilenmesi anlamına gelen ve bir tür bilişsel önyargı türü olan “bağlamsal önyargı”nın Adli Belge İnceleme uzmanların raporlama sürecindeki objektivitesini etkilediği bulgusuna ulaşılmıştır. Sonuç olarak Adli Belge İnceleme alanında çalışan uzman ve analizcilerin inceleme ve raporlama sürecini; yalnızca inceleme konusu materyali baz alarak yürütmesi ve inceleme öncesinde diğer adli disiplinler tarafından hazırlanmış rapor vb. evraklar hakkında bilgi edinmemesi gerektiği gibi önemli hususlara dikkat çekilmiştir.

Eng: In recent years, efforts have been made by academics and those working in the field to eliminate errors arising from bias that affect the process during forensic scientific examination and reporting. Cognitive bias, expressed as a systematic model of deviation in the individual's evaluation mechanism, emerges as a major problem faced by the experts, the justice mechanism and those involved in the judicial case in Forensic Document Examination, as in many branches of forensic sciences. For this purpose, the existing researches in the international literature in the field of forensic sciences, especially in the field of Forensic Document Examination, and the solution suggestions made as a result of these researches were evaluated. With the evaluation of the studies in the literature, it was found that “contextual bias”, a type of cognitive bias, which means that the individual's decision is affected by contextual information that is not related to his current task, affects the objectivity of the Forensic Document Examination experts in the reporting process. As a result, it was pointed out that important issues such as experts and analysts working in the field of Forensic Document Examination should carry out the examination and reporting process based only on the material subject to examination and should not obtain information about the reports prepared by other forensic disciplines before the examination.

This paper addresses the proliferation of fake new from a philosophical-mainly epistemological-point of view. We devote special attention to three questions: how to define fake news, which mechanisms cause the proliferation of fake news on social media; who is to be blamed epistemically in the process through which fake news are generated, published and distributed. Starting from the extant literature on the topic, we endeavor to: offer a novel definition of fake news immune from the main difficulties which afflict alternative accounts available in the literature (§1); describe the most salient causal factors underwriting the phenomenon of fake news (§2); offer a novel account of the normative dimension of this phenomenon (§3). Questo articolo prende in esame il fenomeno della proliferazione di fake news da un punto di vista filosofico-anzi, per meglio dire, prettamente epistemologico-con particolare attenzione a tre questioni fondamentali: cosa sono le fake news e come debbano essere definite; quali meccanismi ne favoriscono la proliferazione sui social media; chi debba essere ritenuto responsabile e degno di biasimo nel processo sotteso alla generazione, pubblicazione e diffusione di fake news. A partire dall'analisi dei principali lavori nella letteratura filosofica sul tema, ci proponiamo di: offrire una definizione di fake news che eviti le obiezioni sollevate contro altre definizioni discusse dalla letteratura (§1); mettere in luce le principali cause della propagazione di fake news, con particolare riferimento ai bias cognitivi e alle strutture comunitarie in cui si organizzano gli utenti dei social media (§2); infine, presentare una analisi originale della responsabilità epistemica dei consumatori di fake news (§3). Introduzione Non vi è dubbio che le nostre vite siano sempre più influenzate dalla nostra interazione con social media quali Facebook, Twitter e Instagram. Non solo le nostre identità sociali-il modo in cui guardiamo noi stessi, e come veniamo percepiti da chi ci sta intorno-ma anche la nostra vita intellettuale-in particolare, il modo in cui acquisiamo informazioni, formiamo credenze e ricerchiamo ragioni in loro supporto-sta diventando sempre più dipendente dalle nostre frequentazioni di ambienti virtuali e social network. Questo fatto pone indubbiamente dei problemi, se pensiamo al recente proliferare di fake news sui social media, ovvero alla facilità con cui informazioni inaccurate, false o ingannevoli vengono divulgate, distribuite e prese per vere. Basti pensare al fatto che, come hanno mostrato Vosoughy e colleghi, i contenuti falsi diffusi su Twitter hanno il 70% di probabilità in più di essere ritwittati dei contenuti veri (1149). La vita delle nostre comunità democratiche viene messa a rischio da questo fenomeno, basti pensare ai presunti report relativi alla cattiva condotta di personaggi politici, alle rappresentazioni fuorvianti circa l'impatto economico di alcune soluzioni politiche, o alle predizioni infondate sulle conseguenze di certi trattamenti medici di larga scala. Inevitabilmente, la nostra propensione ad accettare come vere credenze inaccurate cresce di pari passo con la tendenza ad accumulare informazioni online. Di conseguenza, crescono anche le probabilità che il nostro agire nella sfera pubblica-attraverso dibattiti, campagne, elezioni, etc.-si regga su fondamenta pericolanti.

This article examines how service-learning positively impacts students’ perspectives of the homeless. Data were collected through a pre- and post-assessment issued to students in a service-learning course. At the beginning of the course, students characterized the homeless according to common stereotypes. At the end of the course, students’ views were more humanized.

Objectives: This study examined the influence of the model minority stereotype on the perceived mental health functioning of Asian Americans. It was hypothesized that college students would perceive Asian Americans as having fewer mental health problems and clinical symptoms than Whites due to the model minority stereotype. Methods: Four hundred and twenty-five undergraduate students from a predominately White college campus in the American northeast were randomly exposed to one of four conditions: 1) a clinical vignette describing a White college student suffering from adjustment disorder; 2) the same vignette describing an Asian American college student; 3) a newspaper article describing a success story of Whites and the White clinical vignette; 4) the same newspaper article and clinical vignette describing an Asian American. Following exposure to one of the conditions, participants completed a memory recall task and measures of colorblindness, attitudes towards Asian Americans, attitudes towards out-group members, and perceived mental health functioning. Results: Participants exposed to the vignettes primed with the positive/model minority stereotype perceived the target regardless of race/ethnicity as having better mental health functioning and less clinical symptoms than the condition without the stereotype. Additionally, the stereotype primer was found to be a modest predictor for the perception of mental health functioning in Asian American vignettes. Conclusions: Results shed light on the impact of the model minority stereotype on the misperception of Asian Americans’ mental health status, contributing to the invisibility or neglect of this minority group’s mental health needs.