Doug is enamored of the humanistic approach to understanding personality. He identifies the five most "evolved" people he personally knows-folks who are smart, witty, spiritually-centered, creative, and adventuresome-and interviews each in depth. At the conclusion of his investigations he finds that they are all quite self-actualized. What is the central problem with Doug's approach?

He may have fallen prey to the confirmation bias.

Explanation:

Confirmation bias involves preference of the information which corroborates the previous assumptions (bias). It can cause problems in research because it makes an individual search, interpret and then favor information which will benefit their research. It is a highly selective way of approaching research. Here Doug presumed that these people are quite self-actualized and in the end he got the result he expected. He chose them based on his bias and had no objective approach.