Brain Food #736

Confirmation bias

Thoughts of the day

Every Wednesday, I will be sharing a new cognitive bias or mental model that you can add to your thinking toolbox. Being aware of our biases can help us change perspectives, be better humans, and make wiser decisions. In the last post, I wrote about apophenia, our brain’s tendency to seek meaning and patterns in random information.

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Confirmation bias is a tendency to create false confidence in a belief, by cherry-picking or interpreting available information in a way that supports that belief. In simpler terms, we first choose what to believe in, and then look for the information that supports this, ignoring or rejecting what may suggest otherwise.

Confirmation bias can occur in various forms, such as the way we search for information (for example, try a Google search for “Are dogs better than cats?”, followed by “Are cats better than dogs?” and compare the results), or the way we interpret information, or even the way we remember information.

Francis Bacon (the philosopher) summarised it well:

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion, draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects.”

In the age of information abundance, we are exposed to more information than we can handle. Confirmation bias is a defence mechanism against overwhelm. We seek certainty in facts, in a largely uncertain world. But how can one prevent it from clouding our judgement?

It is as important to know who to believe, choosing our sources well, before we first decide what to believe in. But, similar to the stories we tell ourselves, we need to be able to listen to opposing points of view before refuting them. We need to be open to change in order to be able to see what else is already there, especially if this is happening within ourselves. After all, a story can be told in multiple ways, and it can also change along the way, even if it requires changing one’s mind from time to time.

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