Seeing What We Want: The Power and Pitfall of Confirmation Bias
It's in the book we choose, it's in the channel we tune to, it's in the opinions we adopt. In every corner of our life, in every decision we make, in every belief we hold—Confirmation Bias prevails.
It's the mental shortcut we employ when we cherry-pick information that confirms our existing ideas, even if contradictory evidence exists. This cognitive bias is particularly pronounced when we grapple with deeply ingrained, ideological, or emotionally charged views.
In essence, Confirmation Bias leads us to systematically ignore evidence that challenges our beliefs while warmly embracing information that validates them.
The result? We end up viewing the world not as it is but through the lens of how we want to perceive it. As Warren Buffett has so succinctly said,
What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.
The Blue Pill vs. the Red Pill: A Choice of Worldview
The desire to be right and the desire to have been right are two distinct desires, and discerning between them is crucial for our growth.
The thirst for truth, the desire to be right, is commendable and propels us toward knowledge. Conversely, the desire to have been right, often accompanied by pride, obstructs our ability to acknowledge when we are wrong, hindering the progress of our understanding.
Our inclination toward Confirmation Bias is, in many ways, a coping mechanism. Evaluating evidence, especially when it's intricate or ambiguous, demands significant mental energy. In a world where we're bombarded with constant streams of information and faced with numerous complex decisions daily, our brains naturally seek shortcuts to conserve mental resources.
Our ancestors had far less novel information to process and made decisions driven by immediate survival. We, however, face an overload of information and need to make nuanced, well-informed choices. As we navigate a world where information overload is the norm, to prevent overwhelm, our brains resort to these mental shortcuts, including Confirmation Bias.
The Complex Nature of Confirmation Bias
The complexity of Confirmation Bias lies in its resilience. Awareness of the concept is essential to confront it effectively. Even when confronted with evidence that contradicts our biased perspectives, we often interpret it in ways that bolster our existing beliefs.
A Stanford study designed to test the strength of Confirmation Bias provides a great illustration.
In this study, participants are carefully divided into two groups based on their pre-existing beliefs about capital punishment. They are then presented with identical fictional studies but are told differing narratives about what each study proves. You would think that being exposed to contradictory views would have made some difference to their initial views.
Quite the contrary.
Most participants clung to their initial views, conveniently using supporting data to bolster their positions and conveniently ignoring contradictory data—regardless of their starting viewpoint.
Confirmation Bias clouds our judgment, distorting even numerical figures. Recognizing this bias can profoundly reshape our worldview or, more accurately, our perspective on it. As Lewis Carroll aptly put it, "we are what we believe we are," but it appears that the world also reflects what we believe it to be.
The Struggle to Acknowledge Contradictory Information
Why do we find it so challenging to acknowledge information that contradicts our views?
Initially, many people deny the influence of Confirmation Bias on their thinking. After all, we all perceive ourselves as intelligent, rational beings. How can our beliefs persist in the face of empirical evidence to the contrary?
Remarkably, even after something is definitively debunked, many perfectly sane individuals find ways to reconcile their beliefs, preventing cognitive dissonance, something that can be attributed to our need for cognitive consistency.
The modern world inundates us with a constant stream of information from various sources: people, media, personal experiences, and more. To make sense of this deluge, our minds develop cognitive shortcuts and models—some useful, others less so.
Confirmation Bias, unfortunately, falls into the latter category.
Our existing beliefs significantly influence how we interpret information, leading us to recall information that aligns with those beliefs. Consequently, we encounter more evidence that reinforces our worldview. We take seriously what confirms us, but meet with skepticism what challenges us. This inherent bias shapes how we assimilate information, perpetuating our skewed perspectives.
Constantly reevaluating our worldview is mentally taxing, which is why we often prefer to strengthen our existing beliefs. Holding contradictory ideas simultaneously is demanding work; it's much simpler to focus on one perspective.
Confirmation Bias In Action
Nassim Taleb gives a great example of what we all really do in practice.
Subjects were presented with the three number sequence 2, 4, 6 and asked to guess the rule generating it. They could generate as many three-number sequences as they wanted and the experimenter would say “yes” or “no” depending on whether the new sequences were consistent with the rule. The goal was to use this method to guess the rule.
The way most subjects approached the problem was to guess the rule - most came up with even numbers - then generate examples that confirmed that rule (8, 10 , 12) and then guessed the rule was increasing by 2.
But what almost no one did was to suggest a sequence inconsistent with their own mental theory – a test which would allow them to more easily falsify their theory.
The scientific method is to find a way to falsify a theory, but unconsciously almost all of us just try to corroborate our own theories - which is Confirmation Bias in action. By the way the rule was “numbers in ascending order” … just in case you were guessing.
Conclusion
Confirmation Bias is a potent cognitive phenomenon that affects us all, often without our conscious awareness. It shapes the way we perceive information, reinforcing our existing beliefs and influencing our decision-making processes. By acknowledging its presence, we invite awareness; by seeking out disconfirming evidence, we invite change; by embracing both, we take a crucial step toward rational thinking and a deeper understanding of the complex world around us. As we navigate this incessant flow of information in the modern age, the ability to discern between the desire to be right and the pursuit of truth becomes paramount.
And that is why, challenge our biases, we must. Open ourselves to alternative viewpoints, we should. Only then can we stride towards a balanced and informed perspective that leads to more enlightened discussions on our individual and collective paths to discovery.