Confirmation Bias
We tend to search for and favor information that confirms our existing beliefs.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. Research shows this bias is present in every domain from politics to medicine to scientific research.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Everyday life News Feed Bubble People read only news sources that align with their existing political views, reinforcing existing beliefs.
- Politics Vaccine Debates People on both sides of vaccine debates selectively cite only studies supporting their prior position.
Someone has already built a business on this.
Biases are not only private errors. They are design targets — patterns deliberately engineered into interfaces because they reliably work.
- Algorithms and feeds Filter Bubble Creation Recommendation algorithms that optimize for engagement create filter bubbles by serving users increasingly extreme versions of content they already agree with.
Recognising a definition is not the same skill as spotting it.
Two scenarios from the app, with distractors drawn from the same family of biases — which is what makes them hard.
A person who believes an investment strategy is superior focuses on successful predictions while ignoring failures, even though its overall performance shows it performs no better than random chance over time.
After deciding a coworker suggestion is poor, a person focuses on potential problems while ignoring benefits, even though the suggestion addresses real inefficiencies and could improve workflow if evaluated objectively on its merits.
Biases rarely arrive alone.
Understand more. Assume less.
188 biases, 18,869 scenarios, and a record of how you actually decide.
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