i wanted to explore and link confirmation bias in my own life as we experience and live around this concept almost everyday.

1. MOVING BEYOND
CONFIRMATION BIAS
Rhea Fernandes

2. Meaning of concept
• Confirmation bias is seeking proof for only what we’ve already
decided is true, we open ourselves to unlimited errors of thought.
Maybe I’m amazed at my horoscope’s accuracy. That seems
innocuous enough. But maybe I’m also disgusted, yet not surprised,
by the behavior of a particular ethnic or religious group, or
convinced that mounting casualty rates prove the imminence of
victory in a war my nation is waging.

3. Personal Experience:
During my first year of college, I noticed my roommate
ordered pizza every day, for a couple weeks I just thought
maybe the hostel food did not agree with her but there came
a point where I could not remember seeing her eat anything
but pizza. Whenever we would go out, even to a buffet, she
would eat pizza, I used to think she was just a picky eater but
after a couple of months I was convinced that was all she ever
ate.

4. Relevant Studies:
• (MARK SNYDER AND WILLIAM SWANN)-Female college students was
told the person she was interviewing was an introvert or extrovert. They
asked questions that were congruent with this belief and the interviewee
would likely answer in a way that confirmed the belief.
• For example, the question for the introvert would be something like this:
What do you dislike about loud parties?
• This demonstrates how we try to maintain attitudes that are already in
place so that we can understand our own social environment to be
secure and can lead to problems on how we think about others and
social relationships.

5. How they relate:
• I began with an initial impression that my friend was a picky
eater, plus the fact that she ate pizza even at a buffet led me
to form the hypothesis that all she ever ate was pizza, I asked
questions related to her liking pizza and paid attention to how
she talked positively about pizza in order to confirm my belief.
• I denied contradictory evidence from others because I was
seeing support for my own impression, this is confirmation
bias, I was trying to maintain an idea already in place.

6. Resources
• Aronson, E. & Aronson, J. (2012). The social animal. (11th
ed.). New York, USA: Worth Publishers.