How many times have you read about how the 'confirmation bias' is keeping people from seeing the truth? There are a lot of articles like that. But how many times have you read about how we need to confirm that actions we take will have consequences? This article will focus on how confirmation bias is affecting us, how to eliminate it and what we need to look for when trying to correct it.
https://i0.wp.com/www.peacock-panache.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/confirmation_bias.jpg?fit=2785%2C1353&ssl=1
[](https://i0.wp.com/www.peacock-panache.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/confirmation_bias.jpg?fit=2785%2C1353&ssl=1)
The confirmation bias is a psychological phenomenon whereby we tend to believe more things that support our existing beliefs more strongly. For example, if we believe there is evidence that smoking causes cancer, we might naturally want to find out whether it really is the case or not. We have all heard the claim that'smoking causes lung cancer'. It is therefore not surprising that we turn to medical professionals in order to find out more information. However, if we look closely, we will see that this claim is not based on hard facts but on suppositions.

These statements are then backed up by vague references to various studies and statistics. So if you hear someone saying that smoking is good for your health, your first impulse will be to search out the studies that support such claims. You may even turn to the medical profession's own websites in order to confirm that there is scientific evidence to support such claims. Unfortunately, the same lack of attention to detail that makes it easy to fall into this trap also makes it very easy to fall into the'Denial Trap'. It is this that can make something as simple as studying cancer rates all over the world so complicated.

We can avoid being sucked into the confirmation bias all together if we look carefully at what we are doing. For starters, we need to think carefully about the tasks in which we choose to use our mind. We need to make sure that all the decisions that we make are not influenced by our confirmation bias.

The way in which we decide to use our mind is through a process known as 'Bayesian reasoning'. This means that we start with a set of initial beliefs and then gradually build our way up from there. So the starting point for decision making is actually an understanding of what we believe to be true and then using Bayes' formula to calculate the probability of that being true. As we build up our knowledge base, our confidence in the accuracy of our estimates will rise and so our Bayes estimate will increase with it.

Confirmations bias is therefore exactly what it sounds like. We unconsciously become biased towards things that reinforce our pre-existing opinions. So when we look at a range of estimates we tend to lean towards the higher value. But why do we do this? There are actually two answers to this question: one, we don't know for sure how the data will respond; and two, we have an underlying belief (based on our prior beliefs) that the results will be negative.

The second answer is where we need to find a way to remove the confirmation bias. You can do this using two methods. The first method is to simply ignore the outcomes that disappoint you and only focus on the outcomes that agree with your pre-existing beliefs. The second method is to use another method for weighting the estimates so that we are aware of the potential for a bias. This is called " skewering".

Once you understand the nature of confirmation bias you can easily eliminate it by using another method for selecting estimates. However, it's important to remember that we don't need to remove all biases from our decision making process. Just make sure that you are aware of the possibility of a confirmation bias and that you are comfortable with accepting the results that result from that bias.