COGNITIVE BIAS PATTERNS IN LATE ADOLESCENTS UNDER DIFFERENT CONDITIONS OF INFORMATIONAL UNCERTAINTY

Abstract

The article examines cognitive biases that arise in adolescents under different conditions of informational uncertainty. Adolescents encounter misinformation and contradictory messages on a daily basis; however, the question of how the specific type of informational situation affects thinking errors remains underexplored. The aim of this pilot study is to identify which cognitive biases are characteristic of adolescents depending on the type of informational uncertainty: informational gap, informational contradiction, and informational plateau. The study was conducted using the «Text Gaps Technique» developed by O. Maziar. The judgments produced by adolescents across different formats of informational uncertainty were assessed along six cognitive bias indicators: attribution error, confirmation bias, consistency bias, cognitive simplification, negativity bias, and narrativity. The rating scale ranged from 0 to 3 points. The sample comprised 11 older adolescents. The Friedman test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test with Bonferroni correction were used for statistical analysis. Differences between informational uncertainty conditions were statistically significant across all indicators. The highest level of cognitive biases was recorded under the informational gap condition (M = 1.27), where attribution error and confirmation bias were dominant. Under the informational contradiction condition (M = 0.97), adolescents primarily resolved the contradiction and simplified the situation. The informational plateau condition yielded the lowest overall level of cognitive biases (M = 0.83), while still maintaining a narrative tendency. It is concluded that different types of informational uncertainty do not merely raise or lower the level of cognitive biases – they alter their structure.