Confirmation Bias

Though not often noticed, fallacies play a huge part in our society. Whether they are used in writing or real life situations, such as politics, online discussion boards/blogs, or advertising, it is important to recognize them in order to keep from falling into their manipulative trap. Upon looking through lists of fallacies, I have realized just how often these arguments are used today. One in particular that stood out to me is a fallacy called “Confirmation Bias.” This is described as a situation in which a person cherry-picks the information they share with their audience because it supports their specific idea, but they ignore evidence when it contradicts their opinion. I think that this fallacy is extremely prevalent in society, and sometimes the individual may not even be aware they are using it. However, more often than not it is used intentionally in order to be manipulative. Because the person making the argument or claim does not have the ability to refute the opposing evidence, they choose to ignore it and instead they assume that their audience does not have prior knowledge and therefore won’t point out that opposing evidence. Consequently, this fallacy is only “effective” when the audience is unaware of the full picture.

A specific example of “Confirmation Bias” that I read about is when groups of people claim that the 9-11 tragedy was actually a government led conspiracy in order to justify war with Iraq and Afghanistan. They claim that the cause of the collapse was a remote demolition, and that in fact planes did not crash into the side of the building. This argument is fallacious because the individuals making the claim completely ignore evidence, as well as eye witness testimonies, that proves planes were involved in the 9-11 incident.

Another time we may run into “Confirmation Bias” that we should be particularly careful to look out for is when we are preparing to write something such as a research paper. Unless you have absolutely no previous knowledge about the topic question that you are writing about, it is easy to get caught up in researching only the material that would confirm your initial opinion. However, in order to be a truly effective writer, we must always acknowledge both sides of the scale to avoid bias—especially when our goal is to thoroughly inform, not provide half-truths. We can easily recognize (and prevent) this in our own writing; if we remember to consider that there may be more than one answer to a particular argument, we will be able to recognize “Confirmation Bias” in the real world.