Professor Leigh Ann Vaughn (Psychology) published a paper with her students in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, one of the premiere journals in social psychology.
Her student co-authors included psychology graduates Tom O-Rourke ('04), Jill Malik ('05), Sandra Schwartz ('05), Zhivka Petkova ('06) and Lindsay Trudeau ('06).
The research involved judgment and decision making. Arriving at accurate judgments can be important in many situations. For example, we might need to make correct judgments about the competence or honesty of a car dealer, a student, or a politician. Additionally, we might prefer that our perceptions of the attractiveness of ourselves, our romantic partner, or another person have not been biased by thinking about the stunningly attractive celebrities in movies or fashion magazines.
When we are motivated to arrive at accurate judgments, we might implicitly or explicitly ask ourselves, “Are my judgments accurate enough?”
This research indicates that feelings of wrongness may help instigate correction by suggesting that the answer to that question is no. By contrast, it appears that feelings of rightness make correction less likely by suggesting that the answer to that question is yes, our judgments are accurate enough.
In short, the study shows that people do not have to be passive recipients of the biases around them. The process of correction often is not perfect, but it is usually the best people can do once they already have been exposed to information that might bias their judgments.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20060830110417350