Can we challenge our confirmation bias?

-Lack of critical thinking turns us into ignorant monsters-

The distance between our actions and principles shows our true characters; our actions are mostly controlled by our conscious, while our principles are enrooted in our subconscious. On a daily basis, our actions are breaching our standard principles either intentionally to gain something in return or unintentionally by mistakes or caused by temporary self-inflicted insanity i.e. anger, anxiety, jealousy, intoxication, etc.

While we have some influence on our actions if we use our mental faculty. In contrast, in the case of our principles i.e. beliefs, opinions, thoughts, etc. we are quite “helpless” to reshape, reform, or reject them, even if it's evident that we are wrong and we know. We tend to stick to the old paradigms because we think we know it best. It is perceived that people with greater confidence are more flexible to use exploratory reasoning, and less confident people tend to stick to confirmatory explanation.

Having said that, even the most confident brilliant minds cannot rise above their subjectivism, sometimes due to their arrogance/pride, and sometimes due to the uncomfortable feeling to see the truth from an objective angle.

So what does keep us in the box, besides our arrogance/pride? To a portion, it stems from our inclination to search and find information in the direction that confirms our pre-existing/established principles or assumptions, also known as confirmation bias or myside bias. The fixation of our minds and lack of helicopter perspective could keep us wandering around the circle in our lives, to reach the same conclusion over and over again. Abraham Maslow (originator of Law of the instrument) brilliantly stated,

"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail". Abraham Maslow

Our tendency to get along and surround ourselves with “like-minded” people or yes-men/women, who don’t confront and question our principles and beliefs. Thus, we are inherently embracing segregation not only on a cultural, ethical, religious, national, etc. basis but on our principles and actions level too.

Life-- We like to be the king of our castle no matter how small it is, that is how we are creating our comfort zone, where we are always right/never wrong and then, we ask ourselves why we have stopped in my personal development. We tend to avoid any kind of criticism, while our friends praise us (at least in front of us) our competitors---enemies are giving destructive/constructive criticism. Metaphorically, criticism is like a fire, burning down our comfort shelter, either we leave that shelter to grow our self-esteem or we burn down with it and condemn ourselves to smallness. Often, our competitors---enemies are better for our personal development than our appeasing friends.

-If you are made of iron, an appeasing friend will make you rust, while a worthy competitor/enemy will turn you into steel-

Business-- The confirmation bias can have a damaging effect on business, sometimes entrepreneurs surround themselves with similar minded people and work for years to develop the idea to a product that no one outside the bubble need. Usually, entrepreneurs are zealously persuasive and can convince themselves and others to follow their will/path, but once the product hits the market, it is not successful. The lesson is, if you have a “fantastic” idea, put it out there and let it whether in the eyes of critics. After all, the workmanship of lapidary defines the final price of the gem, not the size of the original rock. Ideas are like rocks, critics are the cutting machine and the entrepreneur is the lapidary, the more the ideas are turned upside down, the more refined it becomes.

 Science -The golden rule is the further we get from superstition the closer we embrace empirical thinking, the further we get from the confirmation bias, we are entering the realm of objectivity

Having said that, this narrow-mindedness does definitely exist in the scientific community, even the most unbiased experimental setup and interpretation of the results, are to a certain extent unintentionally skewed to confirm the original hypothesis. Usually, the author tends to find citations that support their original theory rather than disqualifying it.

Then we have the paradigm shift when one scientist shows courage to re-examine and challenge an established theory. As we have seen, the initial reaction from the conservative scientific community is skeptical, and relentless scrutiny of the researcher, in order to discredit the findings. Even the most intelligent men/women are influenced by bandwagon and herd mentality.

Algorithmic editing – Traditionally, we had gatekeepers/editors who “managed” the information flow disseminating from the mass-media to the public. Then, the age of internet-connectivity come about and swept aside gatekeepers. In the past 30 years or so, the quality of our lives has improved significantly, anything from healthcare, telecommunications, space explorations, etc. The Internet has revolutionized our information access, as people in my and previous generations remember, we used to spend hours in libraries to find information that takes literally a second now to find on Google. Our ever-presence interconnectivity has given us the opportunity to have a greater impact on humanity, and now we have the ultimate tool in our hands to create an ever-larger “virtual” bubbles around ourselves to reinforce our myside bias. One of the features of the digital age is AI-driven information tailoring/customization, extracted from our search results, social media activates, locations, social stratum, etc. Eli Priser, introduced the term Filter bubble, referring to the algorithmic filters, serving us to find relevant and customized information on the internet, while unintentionally confining us to a limited level of information in the vast ocean of the internet data, creating a virtual bubble around us.

What we know for sure, without any speculation is that our mind switches between our internal and external world, and we cannot escape from it. If the external reality doesn’t overlap with the internal one, tension will arise to cause harm to us. Confirmation bias could serve us as a kind of protection, but at the same time, it could confine us to a small area to operate from, since anything foreign could cause fair and anxiety. Here my suggestion on how might be able to broaden our horizons and to expand our myside bias to make it more objective.

1-   Identify our confirmation biases: every individual has surrounded themselves with an environment that they feel is necessary to their existence, and are even afraid to identify the elements that sustain this subjective reality.

2- Sometimes it is good to leave behind things/people to grow strong: What gives us the energy should be our purpose/mission in life, that is what should keep us ticking, nothing in life is permanent, and that goes to all of the (living) things.

3-   Embrace critic as a tool to grow: use criticism as fuel to boost our fire rather than a cold shower. In retrospect, when it comes to our personal development, the harshest situations and people have served us best.

4-   Re-examine your friends:  are your friends guiding you in the right direction or just appease your ego. Are they part of your grand plan in life, or just dead weight pulling you in the abyss?

5-   Don’t get too attached to any belief: our minds will transmute if we keep it open, so following blindly anyone or any idea would inhibit our personal development, we should not forget all ideas were produced one way or another by our fellow men/women and as we know we have our limitations, so there is no perfect idea or a perfect world.

6-   Look inside for the truth to make it your reality outside: I believe that we have an innate moral compass somehow encoded in our DNA, we need to dig deeper into our subconscious to find the truth and apply it in our lives.

7-   Never judge anyone: stereotyping and our prejudice stem from our confirmation bias, we tend to see ourselves either above or below others, due to the level of our self-esteem, either by denouncing or praising them. 

<div class="LI-profile-badge" data-version="v1" data-size="medium" data-locale="en_US" data-type="vertical" data-theme="light" data-vanity="ali-jahanshahi"><a class="LI-simple-link" >Ali Jahanshahi</a></div>