Selective Hearing and My Friend Jason

I have a friend — let’s call him Jason. Jason helps me do what I want to do.

Here’s how this works:

1- I have an idea.
2- “Somebody Smart” questions the idea.
3- I call Jason.
4- Jason tells me it’s a good idea.
5- I say “see, it’s a great idea!”
6- I do my great idea.
7- My great idea often turns out to be a bad idea.
8- Oh well, who cares, it was fun anyway.
9- “Somebody Smart” rolls her eyes.
10- Aaaand… repeat.

Sound familiar?

I bet it does… turns out, academics have a name for this. It’s called Confirmation Bias.

Oh… you’ve heard of it? OF COURSE YOU’VE HEARD OF IT! You’ve heard of it because you are guilty of it, and so is everyone else. It’s how we humans make decisions. We create a system to simply rubber stamp whatever idea we have. Rarely do we actually subject them to the scrutiny of any REAL research.

This can be something fairly benign, like when you grant yourself permission to eat ice cream for breakfast because you googled “why you should eat ice cream for breakfast” and found this.

But confirmation bias can wreak major havoc on your finances, not to mention your personal life.

And next week, I’m going to tell you exactly why.

But for now, at least you know. That thing you do when you call your own personal Jason? It has a name.

It’s called confirmation bias, and I promise you, if this sounds familiar at all, you are not alone.

This is part one of a three-part series on Confirmation Bias. Read part two of the Confirmation Bias series here.

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