If You Are Having a Bad Day Remember This: Confirmation Bias
Today I woke up to realise that I have a headache. Is there a better way to start a day than a headache?
Before long, the construction outside my window woke up too and started to make perfectly suitable construction sounds.
The sky was promisingly grey, but the weather app claimed that a chance of rain was less than 30 percent. Having this in mind, I put on my white jeans and hoped that this would cheer me up. Somehow.
Outdoors there were some puddles which remained from the previous rainy days. Naturally, when I was walking near one of them, a truck approached and splashed water onto the white jeans.
Things didn’t improve by lunch, and I decided to have a walk outside. A minute into my walk it started to rain.
When you are having one of these days, everything seems to go wrong. People don’t smile, work doesn’t seem appealing, friends don’t understand you.
The thing is that the mind has a limited capacity to process information. That is why it’s so easy to overlook good events during a bad day.
Cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment.
In particular, confirmation bias is a tendency to notice only the information that confirms your belief. If you believe you are having a bad day, you will pay attention mainly to poor events. This, in turn, will strengthen your belief and cause more misery.
It’s good to remember this phenomenon the first time you call your day a bad day.
As I write this, it’s afternoon here in Europe and I’m not able to recall any positive experiences during this day anymore. Because my mind didn’t pay attention to them whatsoever. Remembering the bias, I’m going to make the most of the rest of the day, after all, I have the white jeans on.
Have a good day and keep in mind the bias.
