It is the reason for why people ignore some information and pay attention to other information, as shown in multiple examples through the movie Dallas Buyers Club. Ron Woodroof held the belief that he was healthy, so he only paid attention to the information that proved that he couldn’t have HIV, which was that he wasn’t a homosexual. He then believed that the drug AZT would aid him in treating his illness so he only viewed the studies he read about as valid reasoning to back his belief and disregarded the doctor’s opinions. Finally, the doctors in the film also disregarded a lot of completely valid information and only paid attention to studies that proved their own beliefs, that the drug AZT is one that would advance the treatment of HIV. Although confirmation bias does not seem like a rational thing to have, it is engrained in the human brain to find validity in the human’s own beliefs and therefore ignores all (still completely valid) information that opposes the belief that the human holds.
In the epigraph of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Ellison quoted, “Harry: I tell you, it is not me you are looking at…but that other person, if person, you thought I was: let your necrophily feed upon that carcase… [sic]” This quote from T. S. Eliot’s Family Reunion portrays one of Ellison’s chief themes in many of his works. This inclination towards seeing what you want to see and omitting all else is, in psychology, called the confirmation bias. Individuals do this subconsciously every day without fail. Whether this bias is shown through writing a persuasive essay, or through explaining an issue to a colleague or friend, it plays a large role in many of our lives.
To answer Bertrand Russell's implied question, no person can write an interesting story about history without bias. When readers or people get excited about a story, there has to be a slight bias, positive or negative, when writing about true events to keep people questioning and responsive enough to continue reading. Some authors will have an obvious inclination toward characters to catch people's attention and see if the readers can recognize instances where a personal opinion is being used, which may inspire people to want to` pursue a story. An author's goal is to get the reader's attention and keep it; using bias is one way to do that. As seen in Jon Krakauer's story Into the Wild, there’s a positive bias toward protagonist Chris McCandless.
Therefore, we interpret further information only to benefit our conception. Furthermore, we consider external information—ones which oppose our conception-- as false. This phenomenon is called confirmative bias. It is a constructive and irrational partiality which is also exhibited by various officers, and it is what may induce corruption. Confirmation bias of police is observable, mainly, within court rulings.
In the blue-eyed, brown-eyed experiment, examples of prejudice, stereotypes, racism, discrimination, and institutional discrimination are present. Prejudice is an unfair generalization of a group of people with little or no evidence. Therefore, when Jane Elliot tells her class that blue-eyed people are better than brown-eyed people the blue-eyed children develop a prejudice attitude against the brown-eyed children.
I always hung out with my sister and her older friends; they even treated me like a senior. I always was included in their plans. My junior year was a long ride for me. I had my ups and downs, but that is with everything that comes in life. I’m Just proud of myself for getting through Junior year.
Fricker advises different ways to overcome prejudicial credibility judgments they are: either try to change your perceptions to change your belief or start by changing your beliefs first then go back and change your beliefs. This can be challenging to some people because some people can not distinguish what is right from wrong in their own beliefs. Some may get their beliefs from seeing the same old perception we get form the same old stereotypes that makes our brain start thinking those false stereotypes as a true fact that one believes. Those false beliefs turn into conscious judgment towards a particular person or group of people. In order to control these prejudicial credibility judgments, one has to know where their problem emerges from
This was mainly the fact that during those few years, teenagers take rapid strides in puberty. By the end of my sophomore year, everyone around me was completely different person from who I was
It could lead to reinforcing a person’s own beliefs or changing them once learning new information that his or her old source might have
Finally, we will define confirmation bias and demonstrate how it was used to irreversibly harm the following 5 boys' lives. Confirmation bias is when we tend to disregard or question information in order to see things through a lens that better suits our belief system. We chose to analyze the Central Park Five case because we believe that it is a great example of how confirmation
What do you think of when you think high school? For many people, the words “high school” make their stomach churn, others automatically smile, and for the rest of us we have mixed feelings about it. For me, my high school years were the years I felt more like an outsider than ever. So many of my high school days were spent obsessing over how I felt like I failed to fit in. Every night I would think about what I could do to fit in.
Most high school students are subject to an everyday routine consisting of having classes all day, having to talk to teachers and go to extracurricular activities just to go home to study and sleep. If you have ever watched high school musical growing up you may have thought about what high school was really going to be like when you get there. Kids wonder if it will be similar to the movie or if it will be completely different than they thought. High school and high school musical have their similarities originating from everyday life when in reality they differ in the reality of students, teachers, classes, sports and musicals. High school students are everyday typical teenagers, their attention is stuck on their phone, and friends for the most part.
Overprecision is the act of thinking your judgments and decisions are accurate without verification that our decisions are correct. This causes one to be overconfident. Most of us are overconfident than we should about our accuracy of knowledge and our beliefs. One’s confidence interval can be expressed by the bull’s-eye that people draw on a target. The smaller the bullseye is drawn, the more confident they are about their desired outcome.
Cognitive dissonance is experienced by every human being goes through at some point of their lives, through rationalizing when there is an uncomfortable feeling for doing something that goes against their beliefs. According to this theory, individuals are able to recognize when they are acting in ways that are opposite from their beliefs. He argued that it would be hard for an individual to ignore the behaviors that violates ones principles, which will cause feelings of discomfort. Cognitive dissonance, when there are a differences and similarities between beliefs and behaviors, something must change in order to eliminate or reduce the dissonance. Feinster argued that there are three ways to help reduce or dissolve cognitive dissonance:
A personal bias doesn’t only encourage us to not believe a source, it also makes us ignore some, as seen in the case of confirmation bias, where if something counters someone’s belief or opinion, they will chose to just ignore
