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Say, for example, Jim has his bias confirmed on some argument. Is there a noun that describes his relation to the confirmation bias?

Victim is the first word that comes to mind for me, but it gives a weird connotation in my opinion (feels like too strong of a word).

I feel like this could extend to someone that commits a logical fallacy too.

example:

Jim believes that women can not be president of the United States. He references a statistic that of the 44 presidents, none of them are women. Jim is a victim of confirmation bias.

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  • Being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people. – Blessed Geek Jan 11 '16 at 1:45
  • I was thinking "patsy" or "chump", but those are pretty strong words as well. – James Jan 11 '16 at 15:52
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    How about "fallacee"? – Doug Warren Feb 10 '16 at 15:45
  • By victim, I thought you meant someone who is affected by an error made because of a bias or fallacy. But you mean the one who made such an error, right? – Mitch Feb 10 '16 at 21:51
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    Jim has fallen prey to confirmation bias. – Lawrence Mar 11 '16 at 17:16
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The biological sense of "host" could work figuratively, as being "an organism that harbors a parasite, or ..., typically providing nourishment and shelter."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_%28biology%29

Jim is a host for many specious biases.

(By the way, a bias may be reinforced by or be consistent with, but not be confirmed by, a result. What might be confirmed is that Jim is biased.)

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    In context, this wouldn't make much sense. – AHuman Jan 11 '16 at 4:49
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In your example sentence, victim works quite well. It connotes that someone has unknowingly, and to their own detriment, engaged in the confirmation bias fallacy.

However, if you don't want that victim connotation, there's a common English idiom to describe this relationship as well: to preach to the choir means to make an argument to an audience that has already adopted the conclusion of that argument. In this situation, Jim could possibly be a member of the choir (though I just made that expression up, and it would only be understood by reference to the idiom).

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I think 'perpetrator' would work.

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  • A perpetrator is a person who has committed a crime. Engaging in a fallacy is not generally a crime, and in this example, the person is in fact receiving the effect of the fallacy, not inflicting it on someone else. – Roni Choudhury Apr 6 '17 at 15:24

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