A dangerous thinking trap: how confirmation bias distorts reality

Are you sure your beliefs are based on facts? What if they’re just an illusion created by your brain? Confirmation bias is a cognitive distortion that makes us ignore inconvenient data and believe only what matches our views. Let’s figure out how it works and why it’s dangerous.

Confirmation bias is the tendency for people to confirm information that matches their beliefs/prejudices, regardless of whether they are true. This approach to decision making is largely unintentional, but it causes people to ignore information that does not match their beliefs.

Characteristics and causes of confirmation bias

The idea of confirmation bias has been observed by philosophers and writers since ancient times. In the 1960s, cognitive psychologist Peter Wason documented that people are especially likely to seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs when an issue is very important or relevant to them. At the same time, people are more rational, giving equal weight to multiple points of view if they are emotionally distant from the issue.

Researchers note that people find it difficult to process information in a rational and unbiased way if they already have a certain opinion on an issue.

The tendency toward confirmation bias is exacerbated by over-information. People in modern society are forced to exist in a large flow of information every day, while the time to process this data is limited. Thus, the brain’s defense mechanism is triggered, offering simpler solutions and answers based on already known data (even if they are factually incorrect).

Another reason why people exhibit confirmation bias is to protect their self-esteem. People like to feel good about themselves, and when they discover that a belief they value highly is wrong, they feel bad. In other words, people want to feel smart, so when they encounter an opposing viewpoint, they start to feel uncomfortable. For this reason, confirmation bias encourages them to ignore such information.

Confirmation bias also manifests itself in the tendency for people to look for positive examples. When looking for information to support their hypotheses or expectations, people tend to look for confirmation of their hypothesis rather than information that would prove their point of view wrong.

Signs of confirmation bias
There are a number of signs of confirmation bias:

  • Seeking information that confirms beliefs and ignoring or discrediting information that does not support them.
  • Looking for evidence to support what one already believes to be true, rather than considering all available evidence.
  • Relying on stereotypes or personal biases when evaluating information.
  • Selective remembering of information that supports a person’s views and devaluing of information that is inconsistent with the views.
  • A strong emotional reaction to information (positive or negative) that confirms a person’s beliefs.

Types of confirmation bias
There are several different types of confirmation bias. Some of the most common include:

  • Attention bias — a person selectively focuses on information that confirms their views while ignoring information that contradicts their beliefs.
  • Interpretation bias — interpreting information in a way that confirms beliefs.
  • Memory bias — selectively remembering information that confirms one’s views, while ignoring and forgetting information that does not conform to those views.

Consequences and threats
Confirmation bias has important real-world implications, including in socially significant areas of life. This cognitive distortion can distort professional judgment, lead to erroneous decisions, and even threaten health, fairness, and social stability. Consider how it manifests itself in medicine and law—areas where the cost of error is especially high.

  • Medicine

Research has shown that doctors, like everyone else, are prone to confirmation bias.

– Physicians often have a preliminary guess about the diagnosis of a disease early in the course of treatment. This guess may prevent the physician from evaluating information that may point to a more likely alternative diagnosis.
– To confirm their initial hypothesis, doctors may conduct unnecessary laboratory tests.

– Two specialists may draw diametrically opposed conclusions based on the same diagnostic results, depending on their experience and points of view.

– Patients are more likely to accept a diagnosis that supports their expectations than a diagnosis that contradicts them. Both of these examples demonstrate that confirmation bias has consequences for people’s health and well-being.

  • Law

Judges and juries sometimes form an opinion about the guilt or innocence of a defendant before all the evidence is known.

– Once a judge or juror has formed their opinion, confirmation bias will prevent them from processing new information that comes to light during the trial, which can lead to unfair verdicts.

– Bias can lead to the conviction of the innocent (as in the Central Park Five case) or, conversely, to the exoneration of criminals due to stereotypes.
The Central Park Five were a group of African-American and Latino teenagers who were wrongfully accused of raping and beating a woman, Trisha Meili, in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. The teenagers were forced to confess under duress and were subsequently convicted despite a lack of real evidence against them. The real perpetrator confessed to the crime 10 years later.

The main danger of confirmation bias is that it encourages people to hold false beliefs firmly, even if they have been disproved. People may be overconfident in their beliefs because they have accumulated evidence that supports their opinion, when in fact they have overlooked or ignored a large amount of evidence that contradicts their beliefs — evidence that, if they had considered it, should have caused them to question their beliefs.

These factors can lead people to make risky decisions and ignore warning signs and other important information. Thus, confirmation bias is often a component of the “black swan” effect — rare and unpredictable events with high consequences that are often perceived as unexpected and inexplicable until they occur. After the event, the black swan effect causes people to make retroactive explanations, often attributing it to obvious but previously unnoticed signs.

Confirmation bias is the invisible enemy of rational thinking. It distorts our perception of reality, prevents us from making informed decisions, and increases polarization in society. Recognizing this trap is the first step toward a more objective view of the world.