Defining Confirmation Bias

Are you biased? Defining Confirmation Bias

Bird with glasses using a dictionary

Definition

The online Oxford dictionary provides the following definition for confirmation bias:

Noun

  • The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories

Explanation

For an introduction to the concept of confirmation bias, watch this PBS video (5:20). If you cannot see the video here, follow this link to the video on YouTube: Why Do Our Brains Love Fake News? Links to an external site.

Everyday Application

As you can see from this video, confirmation bias has become increasingly relevant to our everyday lives. Now that we have access to more information than ever before via the Internet, we need to make choices about what information to believe and integrate into our own thinking and decision-making processes. In order to think critically and conduct good research, we need to learn to look beyond our own ideas and beliefs to find the full range of information available about our topic.

Becoming aware of our own tendencies toward confirmation bias is the first step to becoming better thinkers, researchers, and writers.