In keeping with the combined cognitive biases hypothesis (Hirsch, Clark, & Mathews, 2006), we suppose that emotional processing biases and impaired attentional control combine to maintain worry.
Testing this hypothesis poses conceptual and technical challenges but some approaches have been attempted, and the results seemed to contradict the most radical version of the biased HGT hypothesis [ 58].
We agree that the biased HGT hypothesis of Gogarten, Doolittle and Lawrence is a viable alternative although there seems to be considerable uncertainty as to whether biased HGT could be the sole explanation for the observed tree-like patterns for gene ensembles, or just a complementary explanation to a genuine trend of vertical evolution [ 32, 119].
The publication bias hypothesis seems also present, with the aforementioned caveats on its downsizing effects to the sample.
According to the receiver bias hypothesis [e.g., Enquist, M., & Johnstone, R. (1997)], it is a by-product of how the visual system is designed.
In order to explain the cultural differences reported in the results of false-belief tasks, we attempted to verify the 'task bias hypothesis' suggested by certain studies (e.g. Tardif et al. (2004).
Additional converging evidence for the adaptive looming bias hypothesis comes from comparative work on rhesus monkeys who show a pattern of response to looming versus receding sounds that mirrors that found in humans (Ghazanfar, Neuhoff, & Logothetis, 2002; Maier, Chandrasekaran, & Ghazanfar, 2008; Maier & Ghazanfar, 2007; Maier, Neuhoff, Logothetis, & Ghazanfar, 2004).
The negative correlation found in our meta-analysis between sample size of manuscripts and reliability coefficient confirms this publication bias hypothesis.
One alternative explanation can be called the recall bias hypothesis.
