We all genuinely believe that our beliefs are logical and based on years of our own and others’ experiences. We have derived our beliefs from analyzing data from the outside world. However, we are familiar with the mental tricks known as cognitive biases. In that case, our beliefs are not necessarily the result of logical reasoning, and traces of mental deceptions can often be found within them.
One of these biases is confirmation bias. In this bias, an individual tends to reinforce phenomena and events that favor their theory and ignore those that do not confirm it.
For example: (Imagine someone believes that left-handed people are more intelligent than right-handed people. Whenever they encounter a left-handed person who is smart, they use it as evidence for their theory. Still, when faced with left-handed individuals who are ordinary or have lower performance levels, they remain silent.)
Someone afflicted with confirmation bias forms their judgment and seeks evidence to support it. This bias is pervasive in our society, especially when dealing with social phenomena.
Never underestimate this bias. No one is immune to its influence. You won’t find any social phenomenon that doesn’t potentially bear traces of this cognitive bias.
For instance, from elections in a fully democratic country to justifying authoritarianism in a totalitarian system, from environmental issues to ethnic conflicts, from extremism to atheism, they all carry traces of this cognitive bias.
For example, during presidential elections, people often lean towards a candidate based on superficial preferences. Based on scant data, they have chosen one of the candidates and made their judgment! Now it’s time for confirmation bias to come into play, digging up all sorts of ethical dilemmas and intellectual abilities in their preferred candidate and presenting them as logical choices for others.
In reinforcing many superstitions, we can also observe the footprint of confirmation bias. For instance, someone believes that our thoughts are connected through metaphysics. They give an example of how yesterday while cleaning vegetables, they were thinking about their mother, and suddenly, their mother called. Such a person inadvertently ignores the thousands of instances where they thought of their mother but received no call because they have already formed their metaphysical judgment.
Now, they’re only looking for evidence to support it. This very bias influences many intellectual schools of thought.
Even the way questions are asked changes in confirmation bias. For example, imagine participating in a quiz with twenty questions. The first few questions lead you to conclude that the object in question is something that fits in a pocket and has personal use. Now, if you suddenly assume it’s a comb, you’ll unconsciously waste a couple more questions trying to prove your hypothesis. Whereas if you continue logically, you’ll waste fewer questions.
One example of this mental bias in questioning is in the medical field. In a scenario where the answer to your twenty-question quiz isn’t predetermined and immediate evaluation of the accuracy of the answers is usually not possible, during the history taking, a spark of initial diagnosis often lights up in the physician’s mind based on the initial questions. Confirmation bias guides the history-taking process, subconsciously leading it towards a path that provides enough evidence to validate the initial diagnosis.
As a result, the physician needs to consider questions relative to the initial diagnostic hypothesis, leading to errors.
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