"That's my story and I'm sticking to it." Bill Clinton
The Cognitive Psychological concept of "Confirmation Bias" falls under the broader scope of my Fallacy and Logic portfolio here at Maggie's Farm.
Furthermore, it fits well into one of the main themes of Maggie's, which is to detect the insidious and fact-defying "narratives" by which we busy citizens are presented information by politicians and news organizations.
I have no doubt that we are sometimes guilty of both Confirmation Bias and Selection Bias at times - but we try to be aware of it, just as we try to be aware of the flaws of inductive reasoning. "One swallow does not make a summer", we try to remind ourselves. On the other hand, much of common sense consists of inductive "reasoning" wherein we happily greet the first swallow of summer.
This comes up today because our editor emailed me a short piece by Protein Wisdom comparing a Michael Yon Iraq report with a WaPo report. Of course, I tend to go with the Yon because he is on the ground and has no axe to grind, while I know full well that the WaPo, like the NYT, is fighting a propaganda battle and weeding out the news that will interfere with their narrative du jour.
Real life is too complex and messy for neat narratives and clean stories. That's why we love them so much. And that is why politicians and the MSM and trial lawyers, and anyone with an agenda, try to feed simple fairy tales to us.
One thing I often find myself wondering about these common biases is to what extent they are conscious manipulations, and to what extent they are automatic. With politicians, of course, one can assume that they are calculated manipulations most of the time, because those folks need the job and they need the attention.
On the other hand, I know plenty of people who just don't take in information that would conflict with their narrative about something (selection bias), and only permit into their brains information which seems to be consistent with the narrative they have adopted (confirmation bias). I have been guilty of that plenty of times, but I am more aware of it now when I am tempted.
We humans would be more rational beings if we dumped all of the fairy tales and worried about facts. Alas, "facts" can be subject to the same biases, as every scientist and attorney knows all too well.
Still, "Facts are stubborn things." - Ronald Reagan
