Confirmation Bias
The natural tendency for people to fall into the trap of confirmation bias came up during a lead in at the Zen center. The example used was that if there were 7 $100 bills in a cafe, a person who walked in with a positive outlook would see all of them and a person drowning in the negative would notice none. The example serviced a useful purpose, though even on my worst days, I don’t think I would miss money laying around (but perhaps that says something else about me).
I think it’s always been a thing, but it’s become a kind of pathology in our current culture where a lot of people, especially those with a public presence, actively seek out to ensconce themselves in echo chambers. It’s been well established that news media not only spin stories to meet their ideological preferences but affirmatively avoid stories that that cannot be forced into the preferred narrative (any exceptions are done grudgingly and with as much spin as possible).
This of course is a problem. A civilization is undergirded by some level of agreement around how it should be organized. But so many people have sunk into their respective confirmation biases that conversation has largely become impossible. The other side is not merely wrong, they are the enemy. There can be no agreement. Indeed, the other side should be destroyed or cast out. Interestingly, the Left has been more militant than the Right especially in suppressing free speech, but the far left and the far right are pretty similar in their tactics.
A confirmation bias protects itself. Data is not its friend. Contradicting data/facts/stories often trigger emotional responses as a coping mechanism for the bias to maintain its hold over our minds. If necessary, we lie to ourselves and to each other, attempt to distort, reframe and manipulate narratives in support of the bias. A frustrating aspect is that it really doesn’t matter what the data says. If someone believes that being a man or a woman is merely an identity separated from the biology of what defines a man or a woman then no amount of data will create movement in perception, and indeed, the “better” the data, the more the confirmation bias will want to protect itself. With yelling and pepper spray if necessary.
The culture has wrapped itself so tight around its biases that it’s a kind of addiction
And it also falls into shadow.
For example, I carry a message that I never get it right. Though the message had already been established, it was drilled home by my father stepfather. No matter how hard I tried, I always got the same verdict—there was something wrong. My stepfather had a confirmation bias driven by shadow—all he could see is what I did wrong. I internalized the message, and so I took on the confirmation bias. There is a part of me always looking for what I did wrong. At first, this was in the hope of seeing errors/mistakes so that I could get it “perfect”, but as life marched on it became more about seeing the failure. The confirmation bias distorts reality. I may be doing many things right, but the confirmation bias actively dismisses/suppresses contradicting data—it works in concert with the shadow undergirding the bias.
The other day, a waitress mentioned her rambunctious 2 boys, I said something along the lines of letting boys be boys. The waitress took it as a statement that excluded girls. She had a confirmation bias on what I was trying to convey. But I have felt the weight of how boys and men have been pathologized for being boys and men. My comment wasn’t about excluding girls from being rambunctious, but about warding off an underlying assumption in the waitress’ comment that the boys were “wrong.” It’s a small thing, but reflective of how in the current culture saying anything to support boys/men has an assumption of somehow being wrong and/or diminishing to girls/women.
Confirmation bias has always been a dynamic in the human condition. What’s changed is how such biases are formed. These days, they often come from TikTok or other social media platforms and these platforms are dominated by people with extreme views or by people/organizations who propagate fake views to erode clear thinking.
My want for others is to vacate social media as much as possible and target the retraction to influencers, the “get attention” performative streams, editorial news and the like. Listen to your own voice.
Understand your own confirmation biases.
We all have them.
And challenge them. Over and over. I will get things wrong. But I get things right as well. There are negative things for me to consider about day to day life. But there are many positives / gratitudes as well. It’s important to see the confirmation bias and to challenge it otherwise it will deepen its hold on the mind.
I avoided TikTok. I do quite a few Youtube channels. I don’t do news. I’m pretty much off Facebook because it is largely a platform for people to make their case for their respective biases. Dropping news was hard at first but I’m the happier for it. I feel less heavy. My blood pressure improved.
So much of the world wants to feed off you, manipulate you, control you.
For all of us, me included, it’s good to step away and hear our own thoughts.
Another layer is that the biases I/we walk around with usually come from others. For example, though the message had already been established, the I never get it right message
Quite often, the bias has a positive and a negative component
