Is Confirmation Bias Obscuring Our View?

by Olivia Papendick

In today’s world of changing headlines and changing preferences of how we find and consume our news, it can be more and more difficult to find reliable sources of information to get news from. Something more subtle and harder for us to recognize for and inside ourselves is confirmation bias, and it could be doing harm to how all people understand the world around them.

Confirmation bias is the term used to describe how we, as people, look for information to give us a better understanding of something. It refers to the general enjoyment most people feel when they’re right about something, or when something confirms their personal views or beliefs. When we see a headline that interests us, we are more likely to read it in full when it starts off on our side, so to speak. For example, if you were looking into bringing home a specific dog breed home as a puppy to be a family pet because you have personally had good experiences with that same breed in the past, even if others might not have, you may be more likely to click on positive titles on your Google search. You may know that other people generally don’t have the same experiences you have had with that specific breed of dog, they might even have negative ones, so you might unthinkingly ignore or choose not to listen to sources that tell you these negative stories. You want your new dog to be of that breed, and so you choose to only read about them from sources that show them in a positive light.

People like to be right, we like to feel validated and have our beliefs supported, even if the support is not based in fact or on reliable information. In the same way we feel bad when we’re proven wrong in a conversation with others, we feel bad when something we always think of as fact turns out to be false or fictional. To avoid having to feel bad, we tend to listen to and believe sources that tell us we’re right and other people are wrong or just misguided. A problem that comes up when talking about confirmation bias is echo chambers.

An echo chamber refers to people with the same point of view choosing to surround themselves with others like them. Using our dog analogy from before, an echo chamber would be an online forum where dog owners come together to share tips, tricks, and stories. These owners will try to band together with one general code of beliefs about the breed they own and choose to shun or resort to sending aggressive messages to someone who offers a different point of view where their dog isn’t within the confines of their code. This is often how different “sides” form when more divisive issues come up in the news, there are echo chambers that create different groups pushing their beliefs, and refusing to budge about whether they’re right or wrong.

There is a known way to combat confirmation bias, and that is media literacy, being able to identify when a source of information is offering reliable information that is likely to be honest and open about the base facts involved. Unfortunately, young people are a part of the population who have begun to lean heavily on social media for finding news and information important to them and their lives. Social media is accessible and easy to find multiple potential platforms for consumption, but it also has a general and very prevalent issue with misinformation and disinformation because of a lack of peer reviewed sources and fact checking of the core information. This can hinder those who lack strong media literacy, because we will take the source at their word and not fact check the information ourselves.

Confirmation bias is addressed and lowered in effectiveness by learning to use media literacy, but it’s worth pointing out that confirmation bias itself isn’t the root of the issue. The root of the issue we have with consuming information responsibly and getting the facts of an issue rather than worrying ourselves with misinformation is that we don’t recognize the existence of confirmation bias inside us. If we want to learn and grow and understand the world more honestly and see it clearly, we have to learn to recognize when we’re just trying really hard not to be wrong rather than denying false claims.

This article was given contributions of information and paraphrasing from the program coordinator of the Communications Department here at Niagara County Community College, Dr. Pytlak-Surdyke. She was incredibly helpful in the writing of this article.