AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Humans are wishful thinkers: we are more likely to believe the things we want to be true (Windschitl et al., 2022). In contemporary psychology this phenomenon is known as desirability bias (Tappin, Van der Leer & McKay, 2017) and as a cognitive bias it is relatively understudied. From the perspective of scientific realism, desirability bias is irrational: reality is largely indifferent to our desires, but perception seems quite responsive to them. Desirability bias represents a key human cognitive vulnerability and therefore deserves investigation. There are a number of questions to ask of the phenomenon. How strong and robust is it? What moderates it? Can we reduce or enhance it? What might explain it? How does it relate to existing theories and literatures, such as self-deception, motivated reasoning and predictive processing? What is its relationship with (the much more famous) confirmation bias? How much certainty do we have about the above answers? I will review some of the literature that is relevant to these questions and discuss how we might go about working towards a satisfactory explanation for desirability bias.