As Donald Trump’s four year term is coming to a close, people all over the United States–and the world– were more anxious than ever to see who would win the election. Would Trump be rewarded with a second term, or would former Vice-President Joe Biden get enough votes to make Trump the first one-term President since Clinton beat Bush in 1992? Regardless of the fact that Biden won, one thing is clear: our country seems to be more politically divided than ever before. The rise of biased news sources combined with the power of confirmation bias have contributed to much of our current, incredibly-divided, political climate.
Walter Cronkite, a retired CBS news anchor who was widely trusted by Middle America.
Before cable and internet news, the three television networks in the United States were ABC, CBS, and NBC. Because they had to appeal to very broad and diverse audiences, these networks relayed the news of the day fairly objectively, and it was challenging to decipher whether news anchors, such as Walter Cronkite, were liberal or conservative based on their reporting (Poniewozik). Over the last 30 years, with the rise of cable and internet news, news sources have become increasingly more biased and focused on niche audiences. These networks are supplying the public with opinionated accounts of what’s going on instead of seeking to simply report objective facts (Pearson). Those who follow the news know that many networks and sites like CNN, the Atlantic, the Daily Beast, and MSNBC are left-leaning news sources, and thus share the news from a more liberal point of view. The opposite is true for networks like Fox News, Breitbart and the National Review, which are right leaning and promote more conservative opinions, as expressed through the data found by AllSides–a Media Bias chart that collects information from people across the political spectrum through blind bias surveys, editorial reviews, independent reviews, and third party data. Read more…
On Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. Although his supporters were excited and triumphant, many students at Colby College and other campuses across America were left shell-shocked. Students at Ivy League colleges – and those at Ivy League wannabees – seemed especially devastated and stunned. The website The College Fix reported numerous scenarios that suggested that students had expected a completely different outcome. Students at Columbia “came running, screaming, and crying to College Walk at 1 a.m.”, and insisted that exams be postponed so they could recover from the ordeal of Trump’s win. Over at Cornell, a completely bewildered student wandered around campus mid-election screaming, “How the f*** is he winning? What the f***?” At Yale, campus organizers actually organized a post-election group primal scream so students could “express their frustration productively.” Even at Penn, Trump’s alma mater, as it appeared likely that Trump would win the election, a student described a “miserable and most depressing scene.” How could some of the supposedly smartest students in America, schooled on the most elite of college campuses be so befuddled? What happened? Were they really so stupid, or had they perhaps been dumbed-down by their rarefied environment and media predictions based on misleading polls? To read more about misleading polls, click here. The answer can be found in a better understanding of the way the brain selects information from the environment, assesses it for accuracy, and reconciles it with pre-existing beliefs.
Imagine walking into a clothing store before the holidays. You are on the lookout for a long-sleeved shirt to wear to a dinner party next week but do not have much time due to a haircut appointment in half an hour. While driving there you thought this would be a fairly quick and easy task, but now, while wedged between a mother and daughter, you are repeatedly asking yourself why you didn’t just buy something online. You don’t
Clothing rack during the holidays.
have time for this! Once you finally locate the long-sleeved clothing rack and maneuver through all of the people, you find the perfect black long-sleeved shirt. You hold up the shirt to get a better look and glance down at the price tag. The first two numbers on the price tag are two and nine which are followed by two small nine’s, but you only fixate on the first two and nine. You decide that $29 is too expensive which is fine because the material seems like it would be itchy anyway. As you are putting the shirt back, you notice a big red sign above the clothing rack. The sign reads “50% off” in the middle with sixty dollars crossed out on the top followed by the new price of 29.99 dollars on the bottom. You freak out while thinking to yourself: “it used to be 60 dollars! I must get this!” It becomes a no-brainer and you immediately walk towards the cash register completely forgetting about the possibility of the material being terribly itchy.
Have you ever interacted with someone, say at a party, and for you its simply a friendly interaction; a few jokes, some nods, and a couple of smiles but at some point in the conversation it becomes clear the other person thought that those jokes, nods, and smiles were indicative of something more sexual and intimate? If you’ve answered yes to this question, please call 1-800-Sexual Overperception Bias because that’s what just happened.
What is the Sexual Overperception Bias?
The Sexual Overperception Bias is the tendency to believe that others are more sexually interested in you than they actually are. As in the example above the other person in that conversation overestimated the sexual interest when there wasn’t any. Interestingly, this tendency is more common in men than in women. This occurs for many reasons across many different situations.
Coworkers talking over coffee in the breakroom. A situation where the bias may occur. Source: https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/08/07/breakrooms-keeping-your-employees-caffeinated-content-2/
Often times people are able to think of a friend who thinks everyone they interact with is flirting with them and wants a sexual relationship of some sort. It often looks like automatically believing every time someone offers a smile this friend concludes that the person has promiscuous intentions. This bias occurs in party situations, with staff at restaurants and hotels, the cashier at the grocery store, or amongst coworkers in the office. One instance may occur in the workplace where one coworker thinks another coworker is sexually interested in them because this coworker always offers to make them a cup of coffee. When the bias occurs in this situation, it is very likely that the work environment will become tense and uncomfortable. Or it may happen at a restaurant where the waiter’s hospitality is thought of as flirtatious often resulting in discomfort for the waiter while attending to this guest. The bias is also heavily present in romantic comedies, reality television shows, and sitcoms as a cliche for the overconfident guy who often states, “I think she wants me”. But why does this bias even happen, and can it be avoided?
There is a cold crispness to the air, but the sun in the cloudless sky gives you the little bit of warmth you need to feel comfortable. It is an early November day, and it is time for the U-12 soccer championship. Maybe you are a player, a parent, a friend, even a referee here today. There are four teams here with the same goal in mind, to win all their games so that they get crowned champion. The Cheshire Rams are the ones you are hoping to win today. You do not know how the day is going to go because all of the teams here have had great records this season and are all very competitive for the title. Hours later, the Cheshire Rams have done it. They are champions! You are in the car riding back, and all you can think to yourself is “wow, I knew it would happen!”
Let’s picture a tarot scenario: you drop by a covert room to find someone who can read tarot cards. The person wearing a dark veil asks you to keep a question in your mind. Then, you are asked to pull three cards from the card deck after shuffling and the card reader will show you the spread (the card formation). The next step is to stay calm and wait for the tarot reader to tell you the tarot’s divine messages. Assuming the three cards are The Tower (Arcanum XVI), The Star (Arcanum XVII), and The Lovers (Arcanum VI). The tarot reader might check the reference book and translate the tarot result into the understandable language to address your concern. For example, the Lover indicates that you are uncertain about making an important decision; the Star represents your willingness to change; the Tower is a sign of an ambiguous state you are currently in. You might find these card readings are strikingly accurate but you cannot tell any scientific support for the phenomenon. The tarot scene you just imagined is one type of superstitious behavior prevalent today. Superstition penetrates your daily life in various forms that you may or may not even realize. Wearing lucky socks endows people with good charm in games or exams. For some people, the black cat is reckoned to bring bad luck as people encounter it. Superstition is not the byproduct of illiteracy or feudalism. The trick is that rational beings choose to believe in the improbable. What drives an educated person with a stable emotional state to superstitious practice is an intriguing topic to explore.
A better understanding of cognitive biases can improve your social media habits
Image source: ‘Proposed bill would ban “mindless scrolling” and addictive features on social media apps’ article at wtnh.com
Instagram. Snapchat. Facebook. Twitter. Youtube. If you use any of these sites, you are one of 7 in 10 Americans using social media to connect with people around the world – these platforms have become a part of our lives and culture. And if you’ve spent more than five minutes on one of these sites, you have probably been subjected to some… interesting opinions. Maybe your weird aunt retweeted something about vaccines causing autism, or a random page with thousands of followers pops up, selling herbs and crystals to align your chakras and stay healthy. Maybe it’s an account with “fact” in the name, but half of their posts explain that 5G causes covid-19 symptoms. The comments under these posts are a vicious mix of devout believers and non believers, each citing articles to prove their arguments. How did we get here? What forces could lead somebody to advocate for “Flat Earth”? Hint, it happens at the intersection between web design and human psychology. As we move into the future, social media will only expand its influence on the world, for better or for worse. This isn’t on anybody’s mind when they pull out their phone to scroll for a few minutes on the toilet, but maybe it should be.
Or not. But probably not. Science has demonstrated that we have a natural tendency to search for and interpret information in a way that only confirms our prior beliefs or values. Ever been doing research for a paper in a class and only searched for information and evidence that supports your argument? Now answer this. While doing that, have you ever just let yourself skip by that evidence and those examples that went against your paper thesis? I know I have. What you probably didn’t realize, though, is that what you’re doing is exhibiting what is known as confirmation bias. And you might think big deal, right? Well, it kind of is. When you ignored those counterarguments and that contradictory evidence, you were arguing through a lens that only took into account one side of the story and one version of the truth. In order to make a complete and impartial argument we must consider all of the evidence and all of the facts. Confirmation bias hinders our ability to do this. And unfortunately, we have no defense to confirmation bias–it’s an automatic process that occurs without us even being aware of it happening. Understanding the nature of confirmation bias and its effects, however, can help reduce the detrimental effects it is known to have on us and society.
This is what confirmation bias turns our research process into without us even realizing it!
The instances of discrepancies between people’s memories of the same event are numerous. I bet that as you read that sentence, you remembered a moment where you fought with a friend or family member about the actualities of a past experience—both of you adamant that your account was correct. However, the likely case is that you are both misremembering some details. The alteration of the details of memory does not matter much in a petty argument, but it matters a great deal in the situation of eyewitness testimony.
Is your truth accurate?
Memories are edited and distorted constantly, resulting in inaccurate remembering. Along with being in place for the storage of your childhood memories and everyday experiences, your memory is also a system to help in making future decisions and drawing on past experiences for the present. The entire memory system is a reconstructive process. By reconstructive, I mean that there are consistent rebuilding and molding of memories after the event. If you think of the details of memory as playdough building blocks, you can envision those details being squished into new shapes and shifted around. As seen in the image to the left, one person’s “truth” may not be the actual truth. Daniel Schachter introduced the concept of the 7 sins of memory (Schacter, Guerin, & St. Jacques, 2011). These sins describe how our memory can “fail” us when we forget things, misremember events, do not encode, or incorporate incorrect information into a memory. Each of these sins results in distorted memories. When you retrieve a memory, it becomes susceptible to change.
Imagine you are a college student at a party on a Saturday night. A friend introduces you to a guy that you have never met before; in fact, you have never even seen him before. The next day, you see the guy you just met in the dining hall, and then again later that afternoon in the library. Over the next few weeks, you start to feel like you see this guy everywhere you go on campus. This is called the frequency illusion. You may think that you are seeing him more often, but this is a distortion of reality and likely false.
When you meet a new person on campus and then you start seeing them all the time.
So, why are you feeling this way? It’s due to the frequency illusion, which is a cognitive bias that describes our tendency to notice something we have recently been introduced to much more often than we remember in the past. You may begin to notice the boy from the party more often, even though you do not recall ever seeing him before. The two major cognitive aspects of the frequency illusion are confirmation bias and selective attention (Zwicky, 2006). Confirmation bias occurs when people actively seek ways to confirm their original beliefs, while selective attention refers to our ability to focus on a particular stimulus while in the presence of multiple stimuli. Since attention is a limited resource, we are not able to attend to all of the stimuli that may be present in our environment. We need to recognize which is the most relevant, and dedicate our attentional resources to that stimulus. The two combine to create the frequency illusion; from the example above, now that you have met this guy, you choose to pay attention to him when you encounter him on campus (selective attention). Once you see him around a few times, you believe that he is everywhere and start to look for ways to confirm this belief (confirmation bias). Read more…
Recent Comments