A couple of decades ago, I convinced the History Department at Enema U to send a survey to all of our students asking what the department was doing right, what it was doing wrong, what courses they wished we would offer, and in general what we could do to improve. Students were generally enthusiastic, and we got almost a thousand responses with many students writing fairly long essays on their experiences.
Some of the comments by students were predictable. Students generally hate every book they are assigned to read, regardless of the content. If Harry Potter was assigned reading, J. K. Rowling would still be unemployed and would never have bothered to write a sequel. Most of the student responses were informative, a few even offered valuable insight into our program. A few responses were not quite so kind.
While the students’ reactions were informative, the reactions of my colleagues reading those responses were fascinating. Without fail, every member of the faculty believed the student responses concerning them was positive. Indeed, most of the faculty had received generally good responses, but for a few professors…. Well, one professor received a less that helpful suggestion: “Die Bitch, Die!” Another professor was absolutely positive that the survey had been personally positive, somehow ignoring that not a single response had mentioned the professor by name nor any of the courses taught by the professor.
There are countless real world (nothing in academia is real) examples. Confirmation bias is why newspapers, the three or four real newspapers still publishing, still print horoscopes in the 21st Century. Readers interpret generalized predictions about personality traits as uniquely tailored to themselves believing vague descriptions precisely describe their personal traits.
Confirmation bias is why employee performance evaluations are generally a waste of time. Employees usually interpret all but the most strongly written negative feedback as highly positive, believing they are indispensable, even if the review is average or slightly negative.
This is also why professional sports announcer on television can comment on a game and make fans of both teams happy. The announcers have learned that the fans interpret neutral statements as supportive of their team, believing the announcers favor them or their favorite players.
Ever notice that television commercials trying to sell you medications never specifically describe the diseases they treat? Consumers interpret general product claims as uniquely relevant to their needs, believing products are specifically beneficial or targeted to them personally.
I’ll give you another personal example. A few years ago, I read The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. The book was first published in 1996 and is based on extensive research into the habits and behaviors of wealthy Americans. The book challenges popular assumptions about wealth, showing that many millionaires live modestly, save diligently, and avoid flashy spending. The neighbors of most millionaires literally have no idea of the prosperity of the people living next door.
I really enjoyed the book and recommended it to several friends. Without exception, everyone I knew who read the book commented on how much their own lifestyle matched the lives of these closet millionaires. The book gave dozens of examples, so everyone who read it could find at least one example that matched their lifestyle. One friend, whose extravagant spending habits all but guarantee he will still be working long after he starts receiving Social Security, knew the book was about him because, just like the average millionaire, he drove a Ford pickup.
This is a perfect example of the type of confirmation bias called the Barnum Effect. The term comes from P. T. Barnum, the showman who supposedly said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Psychologist Bertram Forer demonstrated it in a 1949 study where he gave students identical personality descriptions and told them they were based on a personal test—the students rated the descriptions as highly accurate.
The Millionaire Next Door hits this sweet spot because it describes frugal, hard-working people who quietly accumulate wealth—an identity many people want to claim, whether or not it’s entirely true. So, they unconsciously see themselves in it.
The Barnum Effect is why motivation seminars and self-help books are so popular. “You’re the type of person who’s destined for greatness but just hasn’t found your path yet.”
I’ve learned a lot about confirmation bias this week. Last week, I wrote what I thought was satire, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, I suggested that the reader could find inner peace and joy if he would just adopt an extreme political position and eagerly hate anyone opposed to his opinions. Free from the onerous tasks of using reason or conducting research, anyone could find instant comfort if they just let MSNBC or FoxNews do all their thinking. This was supposed to be satire.
The blog post went viral almost immediately. In less than a week it was read thousands and thousands of times. It has been shared repeatedly on Facebook, and garnered hundreds of “likes” on dozens of sites.
So what am I bitching about? Almost all of those Facebook sites where that attempt at satire has been posted are extreme partisan sites, both Republican and Democrat. It seems that each of the people posting that blog believe that I was referring to “the other guy.”
Now, for the worst self-delusion of all. When I wrote last week’s blog post, I thought I was, in an admittedly microscopic way, helping to lessen the extreme partisan hatred. Instead, it appears that I was just fueling the fires of hatred by writing a how to manual of bigotry.
