Four Steps to Conquering Confirmation Bias
One of the most powerful things to know and understand about our brains is their extreme tendency towards confirmation bias.
What is confirmation bias? Confirmation bias is the proven tendency of our brains to interpret evidence and data – both from our past and new data we are gathering in the present – as confirmation of our already existing beliefs. It’s the tendency of our brains to scan for evidence of the beliefs and thoughts we already hold and to ignore evidence to the contrary.
A simple example of how confirmation bias and thought work interact is this. Imagine you hold a belief that you’re not good at oral argument. You feel nervous before arguments and don’t always think that your points come across clearly. Then a colleague makes an off the cuff comment in a meeting saying, “you should argue that point - you’re good at oral argument.” Suddenly you don’t know what to believe and are thrown off track temporarily. This feeling is destabilizing and your brain doesn’t like it. Not only does it make you feel insecure because you’re forced to question a long-held belief, but you’re also forced to work harder to see evidence of a new belief. But then your confirmation bias kicks in and you find ways to shoot down what your colleague said. You think, “oh, well he’s just trying to flatter me,” “he didn’t see that argument I totally messed up,” or “he has low standards.”
This is your brain’s confirmation bias at work. As a result of confirmation bias, our brains sometimes have trouble even consciously recognizing evidence that is contrary to our long-held beliefs. Our brains on confirmation bias are like stubborn children who will constantly reject arguments to the contrary. They see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.
And this is so even though it would be much more beneficial for you to believe a more positive thing about yourself, such as in the example above that you’re good at oral arguments. That way you would go into arguments more confidently, and volunteer for more argument assignments, etc. But your brain would rather be right in your original belief than be happy in a new belief. Our brains don’t pay any attention to whether our beliefs are rational or logical or even beneficial for us; their sole mission is to find evidence to support the beliefs we already hold.
Our brains are also lazy. They want to be extremely efficient and to use as little energy as possible. Holding a new belief and finding evidence for it takes energy that our brains don’t want to use.
Unfortunately, lawyer brains often have even stronger confirmation bias than other brains because lawyers are trained to take a firm stance and find evidence to support that stance. Trial lawyers are especially adept at this. This is great in a professional setting but not if you’re trying to change damaging beliefs about yourself.
Recognizing the brain’s tendency to confirmation bias is a powerful thing. Why? It shows you that you should question your own negative beliefs about yourself because they could be (and most likely are) wrong. Your confirmation bias brain has spent years looking for evidence of your negative beliefs and ignoring evidence to the contrary. From a lawyer’s perspective, being skeptical of the tendency of your brain to ignore evidence contrary to your beliefs makes perfect sense though; a judge can’t make a ruling without examining all the relevant facts on both sides of the equation. Similarly, you can’t come to a conclusion that something is “bad” about you until you’ve examined both sides of the equation.
Here are the four steps to conquer confirmation bias and change your beliefs.
1) Make a list of evidence that’s contrary to your negative belief.
But this is with the caveat that you should not wait for evidence of a new belief before you start to try to change the old one. Most of us want to wait for the evidence to come in order to change our beliefs. Confirmation bias tells us that that day will never come (because, well, confirmation bias). The point is that the time to start changing your beliefs is now, not when you see evidence of the new belief. You have to believe ahead of time. As your beliefs start to change, you will naturally find more evidence for the positive beliefs.
2) Ask your brain positive questions in order to allow it to develop new thoughts.
For instance, in the scenario above you could ask yourself, “how am I good at oral arguments?” or “how can I prepare in the best way for this argument?” Your brain is so good at scanning for evidence; if you ask it the right questions, you will find evidence for new beliefs. Some people would call this delusional, but honestly, you will never know what’s “true” about yourself and what’s not so if you’re going to make up a story about yourself you might as well make up a positive one.
3) Remember that changing beliefs is work and your brain is not going to like it.
Keep in mind as you ask your brain new questions and develop new thoughts that your brain is not going to like this. Why? Developing new thoughts requires accepting that your original beliefs might be wrong. It’s destabilizing to think that your long-held beliefs might be completely incorrect.
4) Remind yourself that it’s okay to hold two contrary beliefs at once.
As you’re going through the process of changing a belief, it’s important to give yourself space to hold the original belief and the new one at the same time. You can be a bad oral arguer (your old belief) who sometimes makes good arguments (your new belief); both can be true. Leaving space for holding contradictory beliefs leaves you room to form new, more positive beliefs.
So, in sum, as you keep practicing the new belief, the old one will start to fade away. It’s a slow process and you have to be okay with being in a grey area for a while, but I promise you it’s worth it. Your brain will create new neural pathways and eventually it will automatically default to the new, more positive belief. Changing beliefs is the key to everything and it’s well worth the effort.