Workers absorb only information that confirms their existing client categories.

Evidence

Street-level bureaucrats are receptive to information that seems to confirm the legitimacy of their differentiation of the client world and thus supports their patterns of practice. … In this they reflect the general psychological tendency to receive and incorporate information that is supportive of their world view and to filter out information that appears contradictory. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 839

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to confirmation-bias literature on lay hypothesis testing, where disconfirming evidence is systematically avoided. — connects to: Information processes in frontline work confirm rather than correct workers’ stereotypes about clients. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1144
• DEFINE: Names the mechanism: selective receptivity is how client differentiation becomes self-sealing.

Broader Connections

• Information processes in frontline work confirm rather than correct workers’ stereotypes about clients. #corroborates (0.95) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1144