The human brain is an amazing thing (stimulating a single second of human brain activity would require almost 83.000 processors), but it has it’s foibles!
It tends to be biased.
It focuses more on it’s perception of a situation rather than the facts behind it and uses that to shape our daily decisions.
One such bias is Confirmation Bias – our tendency to favour our own beliefs about a situation or person, and selectively seek, recall and focus on information that supports that belief. And we will often continue to support a certain belief, even after evidence to support it is shown to be wrong.
Think, for example, the experience of buying a home. You believe the home is worth $500K and the owner wants $650K. You will tend to seek out the negatives of the house and proof for the $500K rather than look for evidence of the $650 worthiness. Even market reports and other house-seeker feedback that doesn’t align with your thinking will be rejected. Until someone jumps in and buys the house for $660 – and despite your disappointment, you will never believe it was worth it.
We do this with people as well and I’ve seen it in recruitment. The recruiter ‘connects’ with a particular candidate, and finds it difficult to find objective ‘fault’ even when the evidence that an alternative candidate is better for the job is clear.
It also accounts for why two people, considering the same evidence, may have very different views – each will be focusing on, and seeking out information to confirm their own hypothesis and beliefs.
And we do it with friends, kids, partners as well. Basically it gets in the way of our objectivity.
It’s a normal part of being human – sometimes described as wishful thinking! We can’t stop it, but we can notice it, and work to step back and try to be objective.
Michelle