The Dangers of Confirmation Bias

By Makaila Tete-Donkor

Confirmation Bias is something we all have. It is when we filter what we see based on what we assume. Expectations about who is bad and who is good, what we want and what we don’t want, are part of how society functions. “[W]e may actually turn a blind eye to facts that contradict our beliefs. We usually think of seeing as believing, but in this case, we don’t see what we don’t already believe.” (Psychology Today, 2016)

Confirmation bias can be on any topic whether it is race, gender, political view, etc. If a topic exists, there is some type of confirmation bias about it.

There are many examples of confirmation bias on the internet. For example, a psychologist named Jennifer L. Eberhardt tested many people on specific races relating to crime and majority of people said that they believe that Black people (specifically men) are behind most crimes in the U.S. (Stanford Magazine, 2015). There's even a bias test that can show someone’s bias for specific topics (Harvard, University of Virginia, University of Washington.)

Confirmation bias can make people automatically believe misinformation on the internet without looking carefully at it. People might want to believe something dangerous just because the information stands by their beliefs. Confirmation bias can stop us from believing things that are true.(Psychology Today, 2016)

Social media can boost our confirmation bias. Social media websites track what we like. They eventually recommend similar things to us, and we may start to automatically trust and share the things we see on our feeds. “People want to believe that they are right and if they see something that confirms their worldview, they will share it.”(Trust Me, documentary, 2020). Sometimes those things are not good. They do this to keep us interested, therefore staying on their app longer, but they reinforce lies.

Confirmation bias can also affect how we see each other. Confirmation bias can make us believe that something we like or believe in relates to the rest of humanity. We forget that other people have different opinions. “Each of us is slowly retreating into a world of our own, separate from a shared reality.” (Trust Me, documentary, 2020)

Confirmation bias is a really big issue and the fact that all of us have a hidden bias changes everything. So, let’s try and find these hidden biases to stop them from spreading.