Faulty Cognition – Chapter 1 – Confirmation Bias

I had to take a break from heavy subjects and let my brain rest a bit. The last three articles in this series took a lot of time to research and compose so I decided to slow down this week and write about something that is quite important but significantly less draining. Today, we will look at the flaws in our cognition. Cognitive biases and logical fallacies are two concepts from psychology that will be the bedrock of Faulty Cognition – the title I am giving this subcategory of the main series.

Logical fallacies are simply errors in reasoning that undermine the validity of an argument. I will touch upon some logical fallacies in future articles, so this brief definition will have to suffice for now. Cognitive biases, on the other hand, are errors in thinking that occur when we process and interpret information about the world around us and they affect our daily lives through decisions and judgements we make. Cognitive biases are essentially mental shortcuts the human brain produces to expedite information processing. They often work as rules of thumb that help us make sense of the world and reach decisions quickly (or quicker).

Daniel Kahneman, a researcher, economist and psychologist, introduced this concept back in the early 1970s. Ever since then, scientists from a wide spectrum of fields have described a number of different types of biases that affect our decision-making in every aspect of our lives. A crucial aspect of cognitive biases to note is that we all exhibit them. Every single one of us. Even those who have spent years studying cognitive biases and combating them, are still affected by them.

So why have we as a species developed this seemingly terrible habit? If we had to think about every imaginable option and scenario when making a decision, it would take an inordinate amount of time to make even the simplest choice. Because of the sheer complexity of the world around us and the amount of information we are bombarded with on a daily basis, it is absolutely essential to sometimes rely on a shortcut that will allow us to act quickly. Cognitive biases have numerous causes, but it is these mental shortcuts, known as heuristics, that often play a major contributing role. Other factors that contribute to these biases are individual motivations, emotions, social pressures, information availability, and even skill/knowledge in a certain sphere.

It is evident that cognitive biases lead to distorted thinking and I know we are all thinking about the same group of people now – conspiracy theorists and we know how annoying and frustrating they can be to argue with. But cognitive biases are not all bad. Psychologist mostly agree that many of these biases serve a purpose: they allow us to reach decisions fast. This can be vital if we are facing a dangerous situation. Allow me to illustrate, imagine you’re walking down a dark street and you see a shadow. Your instinct might tell you that it’s a shady criminal trying to rob you so you might pick up the pace and get away from the dark street. While the shadow could have easily been a flag or a post or even an illusion, it could have also been an ill-intentioned person and that might have saved you from serious harm.

Okay, now that we have laid down the foundation – we can move into the main subject today – the infamous confirmation bias. This bias manifests as our tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and remember information that confirms or supports our existing beliefs or values. In other words, this bias fosters immunity of our favorite ideas. We often exhibit this bias when we select or rather cherry-pick information that supports our views, ignoring contrary information, or when we interpret ambiguous evidence as if it were in favor of our beliefs. We are more susceptible to the powerful effects of this bias when it comes to deeply entrenched beliefs and very emotionally-charged issues. Warren Buffet once said: What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact. This bias explains why two people with completely opposing views on a topic can see the exact same evidence and still believe that they are in the right.

In light of how biases are generally form, the existence of the confirmation bias is not a surprise. Evaluating evidence is often a very challenging and mentally-draining process (read the first two sentences of this article again). Our brains simply prefer the much more energy efficient shortcuts. Our ancestors had to deal with very little new information during their lives and most of their decision-making surrounded survival. The modern world is much more complex and we need a way to make choices quickly. Sia Mohajer wrote this in The Little Book of Stupidity: The confirmation bias is so fundamental to your development and your reality that you might not even realize it is happening. We look for evidence that supports our beliefs and opinions about the world but excludes those that run contrary to our own… In an attempt to simplify the world and make it conform to our expectations, we have been blessed with the gift of cognitive biases.

When first learning about confirmation bias and its effects, some people adamantly deny that they are affected. After all, we are all highly intelligent, rational people, right? We are susceptible to confirmation bias to protect our self-esteem and self-image. To make ourselves feel confident, we tend to look for information that supports existing convictions. Okay, I will stop attacking us and our faulty cognition. Let me give you an example you will be able to resonate with easily. Think about someone who is fanatical about the horoscope and the zodiac signs. They will read everything about their own sign and how it affects their personality. While doing so, they will skip over the parts that they don’t agree with fully and fixate on what the text they are reading “got right”. Obviously, the horoscope is a trivial matter for the most part, but confirmation bias is omnipresent. It shows up on social media, mainstream media, medicine, health, paranormal beliefs, mass delusions, politics, law, even in various aspects of business like recruitment and selection.

Three main types of confirmation bias are:

• Biased search for information

• Biased interpretation

• Biased memory

I won’t get into great detail here as this article is already getting out of hand length-wise and there will be many links at the end for you to do further reading. Think about the way you search for information. Let’s say you believe red meat has negative health effects. What would you do? Probably open Google or YouTube and type in “is red meat bad for health” or something to that effect. You are most certainly not going to type in “health benefits of red meat”. However, let’s imagine that you decide to go against yourself and you find an article that claims that red meat has no deleterious effects on our health. Most people will either disregard the article completely or question everything. They will read the article very carefully in order to try to find faults and disprove it. On the other hand, if you find an article that states that red meat increases the risk of cancer, you will not even blink and accept this as fact. You will not check the sources, you will not dig into the author’s credibility, you will not question a thing. Now let’s remove ourselves from the arbitrary example of red meat and give you some homework. Find a controversial, emotionally-charged, socio-political subject where you have a strong opinion and think about the way you perceive evidence disconfirming your view. Examine your Google searches, examine what and how much you question when it comes to this subject. Let me know how that goes for you and if you discover something about yourself.

I want to devote the last part of this article to actions we can take to minimize this bias. The good news is that research shows that you dedicated focus on biases can help minimize them. First and foremost, you must be aware of the existence of biases. Make a conscious effort to analyze ways in which your thinking might be influenced. Think about potential factors at play that might influence your thinking. For example, asks yourself questions like: are you emotionally-attached to the subject or outcome? Lastly, challenge your bias. Consider the following questions:

• Which parts of an article or study did I automatically agree with?

• Which parts did I ignore or skim over without realizing?

• How did I react to the points which I agreed or disagreed with?

• Did this article or study confirm any ideas I already had? Why?

• What if I thought the opposite of those ideas?

Above all, you should start actively trying to invalidate your views. Look for opposing views, look for disconfirming evidence, challenge the sources you agree with the same intensity and rigor as you would those that you disagree with. Lastly, please, for the love of everything that’s beautiful in this universe, stop feeling through problems, start thinking through problems.

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