confirmatory thought amplifies bias, promoting and encouraging motivated reasoning because its main purpose is justification. Confirmatory thought promotes a love and celebration of one’s own beliefs, distorting how the group processes information and works through decisions, the result of which can be groupthink. Exploratory thought, on the other hand, encourages an open-minded and objective consideration of alternative hypotheses and a tolerance of dissent to combat bias. Exploratory thought helps the members of a group reason toward a more accurate representation of the world.
