Expectation Bias Quotes

It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

I don't view myself as a particularly intelligent people, but I do have one ability that I've demonstrated over and over again, that's helped me see things that other people for whatever reason have not seen. That's that most people see what they expect to see, what they want to see, what conventional wisdom tells them to see. I guess it could be stated that most people only hear the music, not the lyrics of human events.

Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.

Although no explanation can be expected to be satisfactory, it remains a possibility among others that Mendel was deceived by some assistant who knew too well what was expected. This possibility is supported by independent evidence that the data of most, if not all, of the experiments have been falsified so as to agree closely with Mendel's expectations.

I'm not a country music fan, so if you slide me some music and say, 'You gotta check this out; it's country,' I'm going to be a little hesitant to listen, and I think if someone says, 'Hey, you gotta listen to this guy rap; he's Christian,' you're like, 'I don't identify as Christian, so not really sure I want to listen to that.'

We tend to get what we expect.

Men who have been much taught, are apt to be deficient in the sense of present fact; they do not see, in the facts which they are called upon to deal with, what is really there, but what they have been taught to expect.

We find what we expect to find, and we receive what we ask for.

Expectation works in mysterious ways---and totally unconsciously.

If the brain expects that a treatment will work, it sends healing chemicals into the bloodstream, which facilitates that. And the opposite is equally true and equally powerful: When the brain expects that a therapy will not work, it doesn't. It's called the 'nocebo' effect.

I think the price of the food can totally alter the perception of it. If I know something is expensive and the ambience is fancy, the food just invariably tastes a little better - and I feel like I'm getting away with something. But I'm also bored by most 'fancy' food.

When you grow suspicious of a person and begin a system of espionage upon him, your punishment will be that you will find your suspicions true.

Naming one thing after another cannot, logically, increase the chances of the new thing turning out like the old thing.

Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.

To anyone who took the trouble to look, I was plainly visible, but when people are expecting to see nothing, that is usually what they see.

In some extremely important ways, people are what you expect them to be, or at least they behave as you expect them to behave.