Confirmation Bias
When I was a kid I was always being told off for not doing my homework. I would try to explain to teachers that I had been ill, or a plane had crashed into our back garden, or that my pet tarantula had died, but they were unwilling to accept my perfectly reasonable explanations. Much later in life when I understood more about cognitive bias, I realised that they never commented when I had actually done my homework, and this was because they were only looking for evidence to support their presumption that I never did my homework. They were suffering from confirmation bias!
Ok that's not the most credible example. There's obviously another cognitive bias in there somewhere pointing in the opposite direction. It does make me feel better though.
So What is Confirmation Bias?
Everyone has a take on the world; their own world view. Within this there will be beliefs, prejudices, stereotyping, political and social ideas, and personal interests to name but a few things. Confirmation bias is when we seek out information that confirms the validity of our world view and ignore or dismiss information that doesn't. This is not something that a few misguided people do; we all do it to some extent, because we are hardwired to react to what our senses encounter in ways that are not foolproof, even though they may have been advantageous in our evolutionary past. The point about understanding confirmation bias, or indeed any other cognitive error, is that we can watch out for it and minimise the extent to which it clouds our judgement.
Source - The Christian Science Monitor, Bennett
The most obvious examples of confirmation bias can be found under the heading of prejudice. Americans who were prejudiced against black people consistently argued that black people were less intelligent than white people. To justify this belief they produced evidence that black students achieved less than white students in educational attainment. This was in fact perfectly true, but for all the wrong reasons. Then in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unlawful and a process of desegregation started which took until the 70s to cover most of the country. State led opposition was massive. The Governor of Arkansas sent state troops to prevent black students from attending Little Rock Central High School, and President Eisenhower sent federal troops to escort the students into the school. By the turn of the century the gap between black and white students had been halved and is still shrinking. In the last couple of decades America has seen a black President, Secretary of State and Commander of the Army: Captains of industry, writers, poets, artists, doctors and State Governors. It turns out that the only reason black people had a low educational attainment was that they got shit education. Ironically the segregation of schools was the direct result of racism, a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. Worse still, and an illustration of the power of the confirmation bias, is that racism is still rife in America and its proponents still believe black people are inherently less intelligent, despite evidence to the contrary.
Any kind of prejudice, almost by definition, only acknowledges information that feeds the prejudice and ignores the rest. The selective blindness is much easier to maintain if the individual ensures they are only surrounded by people who agree with them.
Stereotyping
Stereotyping is one of the foundation stones of prejudice
Black people commit most of the crime
All muslims are terrorists
All gay people are predatory
Eastern europeans are taking all our jobs
Any significantly sized group of people with a common characteristic will exhibit the whole range of human faults and virtues. From kind to cruel, generous to selfish, honest to corrupt, careful to careless, law-abiding to criminal. Anyone who focusses only on the worst in a particular group, refusing to recognise the diversity of value in that group is clearly prejudiced. It is a prejudice sustained by the confirmation bias.
This is all a bit dark so lets move on to something that puts me in an unflattering light but should be amusing to everybody else.
Choosing my next car
When I'm buying anything that has numerical data attached to it I like to analyse the data as a way of choosing the best whatever to suit my needs (I know its sad but I don't care). With cars you're up to your eyeballs in data. Size, number of seats, MPG, insurance, tax and price. These are the kinds of things that have a range of values. Size can be anything from 3500mm (Fiat 500) to 6000mm (Rolls Royce Phantom). So one way to reduce the choice of over a thousand cars is to define a reduced range. This should be easy because you have an idea of what sort of size, MPG etc you're after. Other types of data are about choice. Saloon vs hatchback, SUV or sports car, two doors or four, petrol, diesel or hybrid. A third way to reduce choice is to require certain things like satnav, electric seats or sun roof. If you still have too big a choice you can reduce ranges or demand other specs. Sooner or later you get down to a few and the choice becomes easier.
So anyway I did this and it was particularly satisfying because I ended up with the the very car I really wanted, even before I had started analysing. How amazing is that?
Well not all that amazing really if I'm honest. One of the first things I did was decide I would only look at cars with a 4 or 5 star rating out of 5. I could have narrowed it still further to just 5 stars, but that would have excluded the car I fancied. If I needed to narrow a range of say, length, I wouldn't lower it any further than the length of the car I fancied. And so on, you get the picture.
It could and has been argued that I should stop kidding myself and dispense with the analysis altogether. This would only be true if I didn't love numbers, and even though I was intellectually aware of what I was doing I still allowed myself to be pleased I had made a choice I could justify, even if only to myself.
Except not even to myself.
This is classic wish fulfilment and a great example of the lengths people will go to to confirm their predispositions.
Politicians
Having political views is not generally regarded as a prejudice, so why does it sometimes sound like one? Our democratic system is unfortunately designed to be adversarial, which is bad because it make building a political consensus almost impossible, like an endangered species, seen only very rarely, fleetingly and out of focus. Our politicians have to adopt opposing positions to survive and most of them don't seem to mind. If you're on the left solutions to the countries problems can only be selected from the red end of the political spectrum (its the other way around in America). If you are on the right they can only be at the blue end. This requires the people who run our country to be highly selective when gathering evidence for their point of view. Thus confirmation bias is built into the system.
Incidentally, I came across a political strategy the other day that nobody else must have noticed because there appears to be no name for it. So I am going to officially name it the 'Either/Or' strategy. If a politician wants to implement a policy that she knows the opposition and half the cabinet and most of the country aren't going to like, it is presented as one of only two options. The argument can be made a couple of ways:
We either do this or we don't. If we don't it will be dreadful. The fabric of society will crumble to dust.
We either do this or we do that. If we do that it will be dreadful. The fabric of society will crumble to dust.
What we need is a variation on the fact check web sites. A world wide network of hundreds of thousands of people linked to an information source by, lets say, an unobtrusive ear bud. If the Either/Or ploy is adopted, say on Question Time, a member of the audience will stand up and, prompted by their earbud, will say something like:
"Those are very interesting choices but what about these other 17 things you could do?"
And then, prompted again by their earbud, list them with a short description. It will never happen of course and if it did I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work.
Anyway
What about the Internet?
I use YouTube a lot, and the one thing I've noticed is that if I show an interest in something, or even more precisely, a particular slant on something, YouTube starts chucking me similar videos. Like a lot of people I vehemently oppose Donald Trump's world views and the danger he represents to his country and the world. This is inevitably reflected in the choices I make on social media, internet searches, etc. As a result I only get new material that falls into line with my internet activity and constantly validates my existing views. I only very rarely spot a Fox News item and even then it tends to be those few occasions that they criticise Trump or make themselves look stupid (not hard) in their support of him. It is I think relevant to this subject that Trump himself gets all his 'information' from Fox 'News'.
Its the same with music. I'm a big fan of blues rock and this is reflected in my playlists for Spotify. I also like to watch live performances on YouTube. The result is that the only new stuff both platforms bring to my attention simply reinforces my current tastes. Every now and then I come across something different by accident and my musical interests expand a little. I'm a fan of Goldfrapp for that reason. Maybe there should be algorithms that throw you random stuff so you don't get stuck in an internet rut. If they already exist, let me know.
If you're a flat-earther, creationist or conspiracy theorist, and especially if you are prejudiced against group of people with a shared characteristic, like race, skin colour, sexuality, religion or politics, the internet will really make you feel good about yourself. Search for a video about the Earth being flat and you will end up swimming in the things. Its the digital equivalent of only having friends who agree with you.