Self-perpetuating development of encoding biases.

The process of encoding new information involves the imposition of preexisting interpretive categories on newly encountered stimuli, even if the categories do not match perfectly those stimuli. We hypothesized that such encoding of stimuli as supportive of preexisting encoding dispositions may become a source of a perceiver's subjective experiences that support these dispositions. Through this nonconsciously operating mechanism, encoding rules may gradually develop in a self-perpetuating manner, even in the absence of any objectively supportive evidence. Results demonstrated this self-perpetuating process in three studies involving different stimulus materials and experimental tasks (matrix-scanning paradigm and two "intuitive judgment" tasks). The self-perpetuating development of encoding biases is discussed as one of the elementary mechanisms involved in the development of interpretive categories and other individually differentiated cognitive dispositions.