Interpretive bias or interpretation bias is an
information-processing bias, the tendency to inappropriately analyze ambiguous stimuli, scenarios and events.
One type of interpretive bias is
hostile attribution bias
Hostile attribution bias, or hostile attribution of intent, is the tendency to interpret others' behaviors as having hostile intent, even when the behavior is ambiguous or benign.Nasby, W., Hayden, B., & DePaulo, B. M. (1980). Attributional bias am ...
, wherein individuals perceive benign or ambiguous behaviors as hostile. For example, a situation in which one friend walks past another without acknowledgement. The individual may interpret this behavior to mean that their friend is angry with them.
Psychology
It has been hypothesized that individuals with
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil
Turmoil may refer to:
* ''Turmoil'' (1984 video game), a 1984 video game released by Bug-Byte
* ''Turmoil'' (2016 video game), a 2016 indie oil tycoon video ...
are more likely to experience interpretive bias.
One study considered the interpretation of neutral facial expressions in individuals with high and low
social anxiety
Social anxiety is the anxiety and fear specifically linked to being in social settings (i.e., interacting with others). Some categories of disorders associated with social anxiety include anxiety disorders, mood disorders, autism spectrum diso ...
and found that socially anxious participants perceived neutral faces as negative regardless of the context.
In contrast, the study found that non-anxious participants only showed interpretive bias in situations that created anxiety, rather than as a function of their
personality
Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, mos ...
.
Psychiatry research has also show that individual with vulnerability to
paranoia
Paranoia is an instinct or thought process that is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy conce ...
have a tendency to develop interpretive bias.
Homographs
Another studied considered how anxiety influenced which meaning of
homograph
A homograph (from the el, ὁμός, ''homós'', "same" and γράφω, ''gráphō'', "write") is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also ...
s was chosen. Homographs are words with at least two meanings.
They found that anxious personalities are more likely to produce threatening interpretations. Another study found that interpretive bias depends on subsequent controlled processes.
See also
*
Attributional bias
In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors.Kelley, H.H. (1967). Attribution theory in socia ...
*
Mentalization
In psychology, mentalization is the ability to understand the mental state – of oneself or others – that underlies overt behaviour.
Mentalization can be seen as a form of imaginative mental activity that lets us perceive and interpret human be ...
References
{{Biases
Cognitive biases