May 31, 2020
What Is Confirmation Bias: Examples and Dangers
Do you know what’s the biggest obstacle to your finding the truth? You are! Each one of us must overcome their own preconceptions to discover what lies beneath. And confirmation bias is among the most insidious hurdles blocking our path.
Confirmation bias is when you favor indications or cases that support your existing viewpoints, while you disregard others that would force you to reconsider.
One typical confirmation bias example is superstition: You tend to remember the one time you had an accident after you saw a black cat, and conveniently forget the untold thousands you didn’t have an accident after seeing a black cat.
In this post we’ll take a closer look at confirmation bias: We’ll see how it works and why. I’ll offer you some typical examples of confirmation bias, and we’ll also see why it’s insidious.
I’ll even share a literary example!
How Confirmation Bias Works and Why
Confirmation bias means you’re blinded to your own prejudices and viewpoints. In a way, it’s not unlike the Dunning-Kruger effect: People are too stupid to realize their own stupidity. Others, prefer to ignore their own ignorance.
Similarly, when you are blinded to your own prejudices and beliefs, you’re too prejudiced to… understand your own prejudice.
This is partly a result of our nature: People, like any animal, want to survive. In a more complex way (because we are complex animals) we want to survive, cope, live, and thrive – in hierarchical order.
However, somewhere along this chain, certain trade-offs need to be made – this world isn’t just, remember. The more you move from mere survival to thriving, the harder it becomes to accommodate everything; keep it all together, in a way.
“Santa Exists. Right? Right?“
It was great believing in Santa. And then you grew up, and they told you. Perhaps it was great thinking magic existed. Keep going along this route, and you’ll soon meet “it was great believing in a benevolent god that took care of you”. Or, “it was great believing life wasn’t absurd“.
Or, how about, “it was great believing in a hero who would make society just“.
Sooner or later, you meet all kinds of such cases, where what you already know conflicts with evidence. But knowledge requires action. At the very least, knowledge requires being able to accept it and change your mind.
This is extremely hard for most people.
That’s why we are surrounded by so much mediocrity. That’s why so many people seek simple answers to complex questions. Oh, and that’s why democracy always fails – it’s predicated on popular stupidity.
And so, for most people, it’s easier not having to change their mind rather than face an unpleasant truth. That’s where confirmation bias enters the picture, as we’ll see with some examples.
Some Confirmation Bias Examples
I already mentioned superstition earlier. I also implicitly referred to believing in God – this sounds like a tautology!
Here are some other cases. I’ll mention each example very briefly, I’m sure you can spot the bias for yourself.
- “Of course the cashier would need to change the receipt paper roll right when my turn comes. I’m really so unlucky!”
- “This scientist says a lunar landing was impossible in 1969. I knew it!”
- “It’s -60 right now. Where on earth is that global warming?”
- “Again the computer crashed before I had time to save”.
These examples are perhaps less obvious, possibly because they are more ordinary (compared to fundamental philosophical ideas, such as the existence of God or the meaning of life).
However, it’s maybe precisely that they are more mundane that makes them harder to spot. In turn, this makes them more dangerous.
But why is confirmation bias dangerous?
Why Confirmation Bias is Insidious
As every kind of thing that keeps you from the truth, confirmation bias is extremely dangerous. The thing is, this is a very insidious kind of danger. To put it simply, we’re exceptionally good at fooling ourselves. Confirmation bias uses you against your own self, playing on your deepest fears to convince you to stay put and do nothing.
Are you stuck in an unhappy relationship? Have all your friends disappeared? No need to agonize over your future. Consult your horoscope and As a human being, it’s natural that you try to downplay the possibility that your spouse doesn’t care about you, or that you have no friends. Acknowledging the possibility would require action.
And so, you forget the 50 times your spouse called you “worthless idiot” this week alone, and you focus on the one (1) time s/he called you “honey”.
In some cases, especially with sophisticated individuals, the self-persuasion can be very subtle. In a sense – and this can be a paradox of sorts – the more intelligent and rational you are, arguably the more efficient your own brain in fooling you into inaction.
Say, for instance, you are facing the possibility that your best friend actually doesn’t give the proverbial rat’s bottom about you.
Whereas a simpler person might think “Nah, why am I thinking that? It was just last week we went for a beer” and leave it to that, you, as a more complex individual, might start rationalizing, digging deeper and farther into the past for any kind of evidence. Because you are sophisticated, you are partially – perhaps subconsciously – aware of confirmation bias. As a result, you make an effort to present “your case” (the biased stance; what you want to believe) in a convincing manner. “I’m being oversensitive. My friend was there for me last year, when I had that accident. It’s important not to allow my feelings to cloud my judgment”.
This is extremely dangerous, because it solidifies the biased belief, ornamenting it with circumstantial but convincing evidence.
— Samuel Johnson
A Literary View
I mentioned how I would also share a literary example. Strictly speaking, it’s not quite an example of confirmation bias, but rather a literary example of how this bias operates. It was also the inspiration behind this post.
The example is from my unpublished project Self Versus Self, heavily revolving around perception, coincidences, and the idea of fate.
In the following scene, Alex and Sandrine (two of the main characters) share some thoughts about life, coincidence, and fate.
“I thought you’d revised your opinion about chance and fate,” she softly said while surveying the infinite blackness of the sea, as if some answers lay there.
“Well, to care and be influenced by is one thing; to notice yet another, somewhat more diluted.”
“Well, that’s true, I’ll give you that,” she admitted politely, “but isn’t noticing misleading too? Isn’t noticing a bit like choosing? Because we see the things that happen, but not the things that don’t, know what I mean?”
He was about to say yes, but it would’ve been a … well, not quite a lie, but not the full truth either (the concept felt familiar) so he chose to say nothing. She kindly continued, unfazed by his silence.
“What I mean is, you’re aware of splits between possible outcomes – not taking that flight, for example – because you experienced them, but you’re completely unaware of all the things that could’ve happened to you, each and every day, precisely because they didn’t happen. Say, perhaps a car ran a red light exactly at the place you crossed the road ten seconds later. If you were there ten seconds earlier, you’d be dead now. But because you weren’t there earlier, it didn’t happen and nobody else got hurt either. Life went on for everybody. But you don’t know that, because it didn’t happen. See what I mean now?”
Ultimately, that’s how confirmation bias works. You notice what occurred (especially if it validates your existing beliefs) and ignore everything that didn’t occur, sometimes precisely because it didn’t.
How to Overcome Your Own Confirmation Bias
There are no easy shortcuts. Part of the problem is, as I mentioned, that sophisticated individuals can be very good at fooling themselves.
Having a skeptical outlook and doubting everything can be a start, but it can also be a boomerang. “Remember how you doubted X last month and it turned out to be a wrong assumption? Don’t make the same mistake now, with Y”.
On a basic level, perhaps the best solution (that I know of personally, anyway) is to realize this: You might feel you’re the center of the universe (in a sense you are; that’s the only knowledge available to you), but no, not everything is about you.
The computer didn’t crash because it wanted you to lose your text. The cashier didn’t decide to change the receipt paper roll simply because he saw you. And no, just because you had a burger with fries, it doesn’t mean hunger doesn’t exist in the world. In the few seconds it took you to read this paragraph, another two people died of hunger or hunger-related diseases.
Realizing that the universe doesn’t give a shit about you or what you think will also help you realize that truth won’t make any exception on your behalf. If it seems your spouse or your friends don’t care about you, that could likely mean they don’t.
Essentially, it’s a shortcut. Instead of getting rid of confirmation bias, you get rid of your beliefs!
2 Comments
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Good topic, Chris. Very closely related to my chapter on “What is. and how to find, Truth” in my book “Humane Physics”. One personal example I can give you is the way I like to read/write/watch disaster stories. I tell myself that I do it because I enjoy watching people finding intelligent solutions (usually in the nick of time) but it goes deeper than that. Based on my lifelong experience and my philosophical convictions, I am convinced that disasters (usually self-made) should happen because humanity is so badly screwed up. In 1999 I was convinced that the Y2K disaster was inevitable and I even made serious preparations to survive it. I was working on software projects at the time to make the necessary changes to computer systems but I knew that it was not going to be enough. As it turns out it was. I was happy that the world didn’t collapse around me but, at the same time, somewhat disappointed of being wrong. It should have happened. We deserved it to have happened. Oh well, maybe next time. 😉
As I often say, I pray for an asteroid 😛