Seeking Validation: Gain and Loss Framing and Its Effect on Confirmatory Information Search

Confirmatory information search is the process of seeking and exposing oneself to biased information in support of an individual's prior beliefs. This cognitive operation can often manifest itself through research and information gathering, media consumption, political decision-making, and consumer behavior. This paper seeks to investigate the impact of gain and loss framing on confirmatory information search, exploring how an individual's information-seeking behavior is influenced by prior cognitive biases. A controlled experiment was conducted, randomly exposing participants to a gain-framed and loss-framed version of a product description. Subsequently, participants were prompted to select as many or as few positive and negative customer reviews, serving as the measure of confirmatory information search. My methods feature a multiple linear regression with interaction terms. The results reveal no statistically significant relationship between the exposure to a gain or loss-framed product description and confirmatory information search. Moreover, we find the interaction terms are not significant. We follow this finding with a discussion of the results and potential future research.