I see the words “confirmation bias” thrown around on social media a lot. They are sometimes used in a derogatory manner, and I think their true meaning may be a bit misunderstood.
So here’s a simple explanation of confirmation bias.
Jill says, “Jack NEVER puts the lid of the toilet down.”.
Jack says, “I ALWAYS put the lid of the toilet down”.
Who is right… Jack or Jill?
Well, they are both probably wrong because they are both probably unconsciously seeing exactly what they expect to see and unconsciously ignoring what they don’t expect to see.
What?
You see – Jill – ONLY NOTICES when the lid of the toilet is left up, and all the other times when the lid is properly down are totally ignored because they are non-events.
Jill isn’t consciously ignoring them, she’s literally not seeing them or recording them in her mind because… those non-events are not worth noticing. Her mind says, “The lid is down, and that’s how it should be… why should I use brain energy to notice or remember that? Keep moving… nothing to see here.”
Our minds are very much about conserving energy… and avoiding pain to confirm something we EXPECT TO SEE is wasteful or painful… so our mind doesn’t bother.
On the other hand…
Jack – ONLY NOTICES – when he takes the time to put the lid DOWN.
All the other times, when the phone rang, the dog barked, he was late for work, and he did not put it down, he simply didn’t remember. There’s no malice here; the information simply got shuffled to one side because something MUCH more important that his brain needed to focus on came up.
Jack notices and remembers only when he puts the lid down.
Jill notices and remembers only when he leaves the lid up.
Neither one is consciously TRYING to tell a lie, their minds are confirming the things they believe and ignoring the things they don’t.
And this is what’s interesting about the situation, they BOTH believe their bias is the truth because it’s all they see.
Their minds have whisked away the information that conflicts with their belief from their consciousness. When we try to hold two conflicting beliefs in our minds, it causes pain and makes us very uncomfortable.
This is called cognitive dissonance (a term coined way back in the 1950’s by Leon Festinger).
It’s very unpleasant, so our minds say, “Well I’ll just ignore that conflicting information,” and voila… the pain is now gone.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.
Sure, Jack could be leaving the lid up every time or he could be putting it down every time, but confirmation bias tells us that he and Jill are unlikely to actually have an accurate picture of what is really happening.
So the next time you’re absolutely 100% sure about something happening in your life, in the world, on social media… you might want to dig a little deeper.
You may just be seeing something you wanted to see and not the actual truth.
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