Steve: Confirmation Bias

steve-wang

Confirmation bias is trying very hard to believe something, while also trying to ignore the information that goes against those beliefs. People sometimes make this mistake because most people like being right. Sometimes I make this mistake too. When I do something the lazy way, I try to make excuses and try to make myself belief what I did was the best way. I once talked with an adult who had the idea where people younger than them should always listen to them because they are always smarter than younger people. One time, I wanted to tell that person something was toxic to people but they did not listen. Then, that person felt really uncomfortable afterwards but thought because they did not need to go to the hospital, they were still right. In a situation where they are clearly wrong, confirmation bias can twists facts to support the person's ideas. Confirmation bias can also be used to influence other people's actions. Here is an example related to confirmation bias. One time I used confirmation bias against my teacher when I hoped for a quiz to be postponed. That teacher was a really boring speaker but if you did not listen they would get mad. So, I knew that teacher really liked talking about their past achievements so I pretended to be interested and asked that question in class. In this case, the teacher was bragging about their research about periodic diarrhea syndrome and I asked the teacher how he conducted the research. The teacher started talking about it and got so distracted that they did not realize that people have stopped listening. At the end of the lesson, the teacher realized that they did not cover what they intended to and had to postpone the quiz because the teacher got too distracted. In this example, the teacher fell prey to confirmation bias when he/she thought that I was actually interested in what they have done.