<p>I'm looking for the name of the cognitive bias that describes the following phenomenon: </p>

<p>Person A asks person B to evaluate and give feedback on a certain topic (a student, a manuscript etc), casually warning person B that the student/manuscript is not very good and so the task will not be particularly pleasant. 
Person B then tries to objectively do the evaluation, however inadvertently and unavoidably gravitates towards person A's premise, and subsequently has a hard time deciding whether the fact that he too now thinks the student/manuscript is poor is in fact his own opinion or just a regurgitation/confirmation of what person A told him.</p>

<p>First it seemed to me that this is an instance of the hindsight (knew it all along) bias, but I don't think it is, as there the extra (bias inducing) information comes <em>after</em> person A's appraisal, rather than before as is the case in the scenario I describe.</p>

<p>Any other cognitive biases this could be an instance of?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-17T15:21:00.813Z
Giving a summary of the cognitive bias description in the title would be appreciated.
Seanny123
<terminology><bias>
What cognitive bias is it when an (ideally objective) evaluation is influenced by the prior opinion of another person?
z8080
# What cognitive bias is it when an (ideally objective) evaluation is influenced by the prior opinion of another person?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-08-17)

I'm looking for the name of the cognitive bias that describes the following phenomenon:

Person A asks person B to evaluate and give feedback on a certain topic (a student, a manuscript etc), casually warning person B that the student/manuscript is not very good and so the task will not be particularly pleasant.
Person B then tries to objectively do the evaluation, however inadvertently and unavoidably gravitates towards person A's premise, and subsequently has a hard time deciding whether the fact that he too now thinks the student/manuscript is poor is in fact his own opinion or just a regurgitation/confirmation of what person A told him.

First it seemed to me that this is an instance of the hindsight (knew it all along) bias, but I don't think it is, as there the extra (bias inducing) information comes *after* person A's appraisal, rather than before as is the case in the scenario I describe.

Any other cognitive biases this could be an instance of?

**Tags:** terminology, bias

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Giving a summary of the cognitive bias description in the title would be appreciated.  

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## 0 answers

