IECM 12.0 beta User Manual > Introduction to Uncertainty Analysis > Encoding Uncertainties as Probability Distributions > Judgments about Uncertainties >

Motivational Bias

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Judgments also may be biased for other reasons. One common concern is motivational bias. This bias may occur for reasons such as:

•A person may want to influence a decision to go a certain way.

•The person may perceive that they will be evaluated based on the outcome and might tend to be conservative in their estimates.

•The person may want to suppress uncertainty that they actually believe is present in order to appear knowledgeable or authoritative.

•The expert has taken a strong stand in the past and does not want to appear to contradict himself by producing a distribution that lends credence to alternative views.