Abstract:

When people make decisions, they systematically prefer information that is consistent with their choices, attitude, belief and value over those inconsistent information. This decision behavior is known as selective exposure to confirmatory information, and it has severely decreased decision quality and hindered the revision of incorrect initial judgment. The significant preference of confirmatory information has been explained by multiple theoretical approach for instance cognitive dissonance theory, accuracy motivation, impression motivation and cognitive coherence accounts. In this paper, we review some recent findings on selective exposure and research paradigm, elaborate the four theoretical perspective and their integrated models, and as well propose a multiple theoretical integration framework about selective exposure research. Future research should pay much more attention on controlled and automatic processes underlying confirmation bias, and should improve research about contextual effects and mixed motivation in the theoretical integration models.

Key words: selective exposure, confirmatory information search, confirmation bias, preference