Bias

Bias, which typically means prejudice or preference, is characterized as a negative condition that inhibits evaluators or evaluations from finding true, pure, and genuine knowledge. Bias is considered synonymous with subjective, unfair, partial, and prejudiced and is defined as errors based on beliefs or emotions that are wrong or irrelevant and that may adversely affect people and programs. Bias is sometimes erroneously equated with prior knowledge; impartiality is thus mistakenly equated with ignorance. An example of this mistake is the expectation that a judge's prior knowledge will bias her or his ruling rather than informing and enriching the ruling. An individual with strong views will have prejudgments (the literal meaning of prejudice), but the critical issue with regard to bias is whether those views are ...