while many international organisations have independent evaluations, including the international monetary fund (imf) and world health organization (who), uniquely the world bank in its 2015 world development report sought to ascertain the potential biases that influence how its staff interpret evidence and influence policy. here, we describe the world bank’s study design, including experiments ...

the field of cognitive psychology has increasingly provided scientific insights to explore how humans are subject to unconscious sources of evidentiary bias, leading to errors that can affect judgement and decision-making. increasingly these insights are being applied outside the realm of individual decision-making to the collective arena of policy-making as well. a recent editorial in this jou...

background several empirical studies have shown the attitude of smokers to formulate judgments based on distortion in the risk perception. this alteration is produced by the activation of the optimistic bias characterized by a set of the unrealistic beliefs compared to the outcomes of their behavior. this bias exposes individuals to adopt lifestyles potentially dangerous for their health, under...

While many international organisations have independent evaluations, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Health organization (WHO), uniquely the World Bank in its 2015 World Development Report sought to ascertain the potential biases that influence how its staff interpret evidence and influence policy. Here, we describe the World Bank’s study design, including experiments ...