“Confirmation Bias” explains why we choose the books we read, the people with whom we associate, the news sources we attend to. Our beliefs, our assumptions, our “biases” are central to our character, and self-worth is built upon the “confirmation” that what we are is good, is proper, is commendable, is TRUE. Naturally, we attend more to voices that agree with our biases, less to voices that question them. In A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, former FBI director James Comey writes:
Our brains
have evolved to crave information consistent with what we already believe. We
seek out and focus on facts and arguments that support our beliefs. More
worrisome, when we are trapped in confirmation bias, we may not consciously
perceive facts that challenge us, that are inconsistent with what we have
already concluded. In a complicated, changing and integrated world, our
confirmation bias makes us very difficult people. We simply can’t change our
minds. (Kindle, p.104)
Well, “we simply can’t change our minds” is
a bit much; we can and do change our minds on occasion. Many of us assumed the
warming climate was a natural phenomenon that would reverse itself in nature’s
own time. Presently, many of these many have “changed their minds” and now accept
the phenomenon to be tied to human activity. What it will take for all of us to
grasp that climate change can’t be fought without economic sacrifice is
anybody’s guess; confirmation bias weighs heavily in our avoidance of news
about potential climate change consequences.
In its very definition, even, lies the
stubbornness of confirmation bias; the tendency is to agree that it exists in
human psychological makeup; the illusion that it affects primarily others,
though, is a sinister example of confirmation bias all on its own.
I know of a few ways in which I’ve been
forced to step outside of my own biases and face up to truths that made me
change my mind. Familiarity gained by living on a reserve and in Europe,
extended visits to Panama and Mexico made it necessary to discard biases about
cultures I’d held on to up to then. Education, of course, has the power
to overwhelm old biases with knowledge and training in reasoning and debating of
issues: logically and amicably. And then there’s aging, reaching a
plateau in life where being right—and being rewarded for being right—are no
longer urgent.
Rapid change can be an incentive to lean on
our biases and to seek their confirmation. I’m reminded of that old joke in
which Ole and his friend are launching a boat, and Ole ends up with one foot on
the dock and the other on a gunwale of a moving boat. “Yump, Ole, Yump!” yells
the friend, and Ole replies, “How can I Yump? I got no place to stood!”
For creationists, the literal interpretation
of Genesis is the ground on which they stand. For some, the Yump from this safe
ground would mean certain drowning. There’s plenty to read that confirms this
bias.
To have a place to stand—even if it’s a
wrong place—is reassuring. The evil growing around the world that sees more and
more people giving rein to a “me and mine first” bias has provided many with “a
place to stand.” It’s a reasonable bias given that it feels like a survival
tactic. That people seek out examples of individual achievement, of domination
over underlings, of the rich, the “stars,” the powerful—and vicariously live
the lives of those—doesn’t surprise. And dictators and oligarchs ensure that
what they say and do—and what surviving news outlets reinforce—confirm this
bias. It’s what we’re looking at in our southern neighbour.
Community life was the salvation of cultures
prehistorically. How we shake our individualistic biases and embrace the
implications of one, whole-world community is a conundrum we’ll never unravel
unless we learn to abandon our biases in favour of better ones.
But as the character said to Granny who was certain she could swim the English Channel, “Good luck with that, Grandma.”
