Sadly, Most People Aren’t Listening to What You Are Saying

You shouldn’t agree with the “confirmation bias”

Confirmation bias refers to our tendency to seek out and favour information that confirms beliefs we already hold — while avoiding or ignoring anything that challenges them.

This unhelpful bias means we give too much weight to evidence that confirms our existing preconceptions or hypotheses — even incorrect and unhelpful ones.

And it matters.

It leads to poor decision-making because it limits our ability to consider alternative viewpoints or evidence that contradicts our beliefs.

There are many reasons we fall for it, including that we:

• 🔄 Don’t like to let go of our initial hypothesis
• 🔍 Prefer to use as much information as is initially available, often resulting in a too specific hypothesis
• 🎯 Show confirmation bias more on our own hypotheses than others
• 🧠 Are more likely to adopt a confirmation bias when we are under high cognitive load
• 🤔 Are often unable to actively consider and understand all relevant information to challenge our existing hypothesis or make a new one
• ❤️ Are influenced by our emotions and…