It seems that once again people engage in a search for evidence that is biased toward confirmation. Asked to assess the similarity of two entities, people pay more attention to the ways in which they are similar than to the ways in which they differ. Asked to assess dissimilarity, they become more concerned with differences than with similarities. In other words, when testing a hypothesis of similarity, people look for evidence of similarity rather than dissimilarity, and when testing a hypothesis of dissimilarity, they do the opposite. The relationship one perceives between two entities, then, can vary with the precise form of the question that is asked . Thomas Gilovich
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The perception of similarity or dissimilarity between two entities is based on the question being asked. When asked to think about the similarities between two entities, people are more likely to see similarities than dissimilarities. However, when asked to think about the dissimilarities between two entities, people are more likely to see dissimilarities than similarities. This means that how we perceive something can completely change based on the question that is being asked.

Source: How We Know What Isnt So: The Fallibility Of Human Reason In Everyday Life

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