Posted by Mike O on: 01.17.2008 /
Zack (my son) came home from college for Christmas break, and we were talking about this blog - as we often do - and he mentioned something he heard of in a psych class called “Confirmation bias”
According to Wikipedia, Confirmation bias is:
a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs. [...] Confirmation bias is of interest in the teaching of critical thinking, as the skill is misused if rigorous critical scrutiny is applied only to evidence challenging a preconceived idea but not to evidence supporting it.
We see it in the schism between political parties (liberal vs conservative). We see it across the spectrum of spiritual or religious views. People easily accept (create??) support for their own views yet reject out of hand any evidence to the contrary.
According to the article, Tolstoy said it well when he said,
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
A related topic in the Wikipedia article is “Myside Bias” which I see here all the time. I don’t know that there’s anything we can (or should?) do about it, except to try and see things from the other person’s perspective and at least try to understand why they don’t believe like you do.
Comment by: Eliza
1I hope Zack is enjoying college!
Someone on NPR recently, in a discussion about differences in belief about religion, caught my attention with a line something like this: “Of course I want to talk with people whose beliefs are different from mine…those are the very people I can learn the most from!”
That reminded me of this site, CatE, and the former DB. I have learned alot from people about what they believe, & why, & what it means to them.
My beliefs haven’t changed significantly, though I have examined them, kicked the tires so to speak, perhaps refined things a bit, kicked up the “otherlyness” aspect due to positive influences in that direction stemming from my involvement here (including finding out about UU and joining).
But… It’s not clear to me how “confirmation bias” (which I know about from medicine & life sciences research) applies when the impetus for reevaluating one’s stance would have to come from a change in faith (gaining or losing it), that is, from a change in whether one accepts the existence of a supernatural force which cannot be proven. Isn’t faith something which can’t be proven by one person to another, or by reading or making observations?
Just playing devil’s advocate, so to speak…!
Comment by: Mike O
2I’ve found this to be true, too. I think it’s that y’all force me to do more critical thinking of what I believe, and not just what I reject.
True statement. However I’m sure you would agree that there are a lot of positions Christians take - well, all people, actually, but since I’m a Christian I’ll speak for myself! - and they take those positions based on scripture or religious teaching supposedly based on scripture. But under close examination those positions turn out to not hold water.
For example, believing in God is a matter of faith (and I think there’s evidence to support it as well - not *proof* but evidence), but that doesn’t mean I can’t apply critical thinking to my faith. *Why* do I believe in God? Because my parents did or because I really believe he exists?
Other Christian teachings are not matters of faith, but rather just traditions or teachings that may or may not be correct. Drinking beer, for example is soemthing many Christians think is a sin but does scripture really support that position? This is a critical thinking problem.
I was raised Lutheran (drinking is OK, but not to excess) and then switched to a more pentecostal denomination that taught that to drink AT ALL was a sin. I never agreed, but I looked into it. What I found was that when I studied it for myself, I found more support in scripture for the Lutheran stance than the pentecostal one. You won’t see anywhere in the Bible that says drinking is a sin. But you will see that drunkenness is. So in this case, I would agree with the lutheran teaching on that topic even though I tend to be more evangelical in my leanings.
For me, it comes down to this - I believe the Bible is true - that’s probably a faith thingas well as critical thinking. But when I hear things like “abortion is murder,” while I would tend to agree with that sentiment, I HAVE gone through the critical thinking process and examined WHY I think that way. Could I be wrong? Sure. But at least now I can support my position on the topic.
I don’t see myself ever *not* believing in God - and I don’t think anyone would ever be able to prove I’m wrong. But I’ve still critically thought about it and I have good (I think!) reasons for believing in the Christian teachings.
That’s why I think confirmation bias could matter. Does that make sense?
Comment by: Eliza
3I’ve been mulling this over quite a bit. There is some kind of “bias” at work, but I don’t think it’s “cognitive bias” as that term is usually used. My guess is that a psychologist or anthropologist would have a ready term & description, but I have to just plod away at it ‘cuz I didn’t find anything that looked relevant at the Wikipedia discussions of cognitive biases & related topics like attitudinal bias.
Cultural bias is the best description I’ve come up with so far, as I argue about it with myself.
In discussions about religion & the supernatural, it’s like we’re from different cultures which have rarely interacted before. One culture acknowledges the existence of something called “X” & even depends heavily on X & interprets many things in terms of X. The other culture doesn’t include X in their worldview, doesn’t “see” X, doesn’t have a need for X to exist to explain the world. And, to top it off, X isn’t something that can be proven or demonstrated or provided by one group to the other, for whatever reason. Basically, the members of the 2 groups differ fundamentally in how they experience & process information which might be related to X or notX, whether that difference is innate or due to their early life experiences & education.
So, Mike and I can agree that we each read scripture & find support there for avoiding drunkenness, not for shunning alcohol all together. Yet the bigger picture in which we interpret the meaning & relevance of that agreed upon finding is very different, based upon these larger cultural differences, which I claim are something different from confirmation bias. We’re not as far apart as the 2 cultures I described above; I think we can probably state the other person’s worldview…but feeling it to be true, understanding it deeply & recognizing the full meaning of it, those things we can’t swap places on, & it’s not because we “refuse” to see the other person’s point of view.
BICBW! (But I could be wrong!)
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
4Based on my experiences I’d agree that confirmation bias is real and significant.
I think it takes a lot to get someone to the point where they start to think “Maybe I’m significantly wrong…maybe I’ve interpreted a whole bunch of things the wrong way…” It’s like trying to push something out of a rut - if you don’t push very hard it moves a little but then returns to where it was. You have to push really hard to get it all the way out - and then it moves much more easily for a while, until it falls into another rut…
To get someone out of that ‘rut’ I think it takes a crisis or a lot of things successively unravelling until a ‘tipping point’ is reached.
(Rut sounds derogatory and I didn’t mean it that way - maybe it’s not the greatest analogy)