What Is Confirmation Bias? - Definition, Examples and More
No matter what information you go looking for on the internet, you can find it.
Think the earth is flat? No problem - there are thousands of videos to confirm your suspicion. Think the moon landing is fake? I’m sure there’s an online community for that. Wondering if you’ve got the symptoms of cancer? Don’t worry, WebMD will scare the pants off you.
This is confirmation bias in action. If you believe it, you’ll filter information to confirm it.
What is confirmation bias?
Confirmation bias is your tendency to seek out and interpret evidence as confirmation of your current belief or position.
Have you ever been in a heated argument with a friend or spouse over something arbitrary? And then when you finally find the ambiguous answer on Google, you both exclaim: “BOOM. I told you!” based on the same evidence?
That’s confirmation bias at work! Both of you interpret the evidence as support of your opinions.
Confirmation bias is closely related to these other biases:
Commitment & Consistency Bias - Your tendency to do what you said you would do.
Incentive-caused Bias - The impact of incentives on changing your behavior.
Why Does Confirmation Bias Exist?
Confirmation bias exists because your brain is not infinitely large. That’s what Charlie Mungers says in his speech called “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment,” printed in Poor Charlie's Almanack. Your brain’s limited number of crackling synapses doesn’t have the programming space to constantly reevaluate every decision you make.
So, natural selection filtered for confirmation bias as an emotional short-cut to convince you that you made the right decision. As you walk your chosen path, you emotionally and intellectually interpret the signs along the way as confirming evidence for your decision. This saves valuable ‘computing power’ to focus on other stuff.
Examples of confirmation Bias
Social Media
If you use Twitter, it’s likely that your Twitter feed functions as an incessant echo chamber for confirmation bias.
Let’s say you’re a democrat. How many republicans do you follow on Twitter? Probably not many. You follow democrats because they confirm what you already believe. This creates an endless feed of information that confirms the way you see the world.
You follow those who agree with you, and you unfollow, mute, and block those who you don’t agree with. That creates confirmation bias and warps your view of the world.
Horoscopes
I wrote this based on your Zodiac sign:
Today you could find yourself brainstorming a way to put your inventiveness and ingenuity to work so that you can advance your career by leaps and bounds and increase your income. You could also become involved in artistic projects of some kind. Don't be surprised if great ideas come to you with little effort. You're very intuitive today, so enjoy it.
Ok, I didn’t write this for you. I pulled it from this Horoscope website. But didn’t it feel like it was for you?
That’s because of confirmation bias. You read the words and used them as evidence to support whatever mental state you’re in right now.
Confirmation bias is the reason horoscopes continue to exist.
Stock Picking
How many times have you bought a company’s stock, only to immediately read an article on why the price is about to take off upwards? That’s confirmation bias.
You buy the stock and are now incentivized to believe it will go up. Then, you actively seek out and interpret information to confirm your belief (Apple Stock Is Set To Soar - Here’s Why…), while ignoring articles that contradict your position.
Miracles & “Signs”
If you are on the look-out for miracles and “signs” to confirm the path you are on, you are very likely to find them. This is confirmation bias turning random events into confirmation of what you were looking for.
memory
Your memory does not recount a factual representation of what happened in the past. Instead, it recounts an interpretation of the past based on how you feel and what you believe in the present.
How to protect Yourself from Confirmation Bias
Thinking through decisions rationally is difficult but incredibly important.
Charlie Munger recently talked about the importance of resisting confirmation bias at the Daily Journal annual meeting in Los Angeles:
‘Being able to recognize when you’re wrong is a godsend… Of course, you have to learn to change your mind when you’re wrong. I actually work at trying to discard beliefs. Most people just try and cherish whatever idiotic notion they already have because they think it’s their notion that must be good…You must be reexamining what you previously thought particularly when disconfirming evidence comes through. There’s hardly anything more important than being rational or objective.’
Here are some psychological tricks to protect yourself from confirmation bias:
Practice Inversion
Inversion is the practice of thinking through problems in reverse. It’s asking how an endeavor could fail and actively seeking to disconfirm your beliefs.
When you invert your position, you are no longer ignoring the disconfirming evidence - you are seeking it out! You are trying to understand the other side of your position as well as you do your side.
This will protect you from confirmation bias.
Overweigh Disconfirming Evidence
Munger loves to use the example of Charlie Darwin because Darwin overweighed disconfirming evidence to avoid confirmation bias.
Here’s what Munger says in his speech, “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment”:
“Charles Darwin… avoided confirmation bias. Darwin probably changed my life because… when I found out the way he always paid extra attention to the disconfirming evidence, and all these little psychological tricks, I also found out that he wasn't very smart by the ordinary standards of human acuity, yet there he is buried in Westminster Abbey. That's not where I'm going, I'll tell you. And I said, “My God, here's a guy that, by all objective evidence, is not nearly as smart as I am and he's in Westminster Abbey? He must have tricks I should learn.” And I started…to try and train myself out of these subconscious psychological tendencies that cause so many errors.”
Overview of Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is your tendency to seek out and interpret evidence as confirmation of your current belief or position.
It can make you ‘double-down’ on an objectively bad decision. It’s the reason why horoscopes work and why people remember the same event in different ways.
To avoid confirmation bias, try to overweigh evidence that contradicts your position. Invert your thinking to try to discredit your decision.
Good luck.
If You Want More Ideas Like This, Follow Me On Twitter And Subscribe To My Newsletter:
—
Munger, C. T., & Kaufman, P. D. (2008). Poor Charlie's Almanack: The wit and wisdom of Charles T. Munger. Virginia Beach, Va: Donning Co. Pub.