Roger’s $0.02 - Confirmation Bias on Social Media

It’s often quoted that the first casualty of war is the truth. As the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues with no end in sight after the horrific attack on Israeli civilians on Oct 7th social media is replete with misinformation and highly questionable hot takes. Yet the most corrosive element in all this is the tendency of the audience to view all things through the lens of confirmation bias. In times past we blamed misinformation on press, politicians, and people with questionable motives. Today we blame algorithms and online trolls. But at least some of the blame lies with our tendency to process and interpret information through the prism of our own biases and beliefs.

Confirmation bias is “… the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values”. In short people filter information in way that supports their existing beliefs. But it’s also not limited to just receiving information. When we search for information we organize and structure our search based on certain personal beliefs we feel are immutable. Any student of anthropology will be familiar with all the shenanigans that surrounded the early search for the humanity’s “missing link” to its Hominini forebearer. For example if you believe that fast food is a detriment to a person’s health you’re more likely to search for information that reinforces that view rather than doing a Google search for “how McDonald’s food saved

my life”.

You most often find examples of confirmation bias in social media discourse around politics and politicize social issues like; education, health care and government supplied social assistance. However, you can also find it many other places including conversations around ethnic/national identity, religion, social class and even hobbies. One of the more concerning aspects I’ve noticed is when more than one of these elements coalesce together turning what might be a usual bar banter about sports of a TV show into a highly charge political argument. For example a simple search on YouTube for reviews of all the streaming Star Wars shows will reveal how something innocuous like a fictional space opera can devolve into commentary and hot takes about contemporary social values. It’s easy to get sucked into debates that seem harmless enough because either you think the shows are bad or the shows are good. As you fall into one of the camps your confirmation bias is either reaffirmed or expanded. “Ah, so you don’t think this Star Wars show is terrible, you must also believe that…”. On the face of it it seems almost too simplistic to work but it does. Social media can inflame and amplify non-constructive conversations but they don’t work in a vacuum. They wouldn’t be so potent if the existing thoughts didn’t exist.

The most immediate consequence of this is the divisive rhetoric clogging up your social media feeds. Longer term it can sow a form self-segregation that affects all the decisions people make about their lives. You can see it, at least in the US, where people tend to live in clusters of like-minded areas. Taken to its extreme you could find polarity of lifestyles which in turns informs political and social discourse. While it can be great to live in an area where everyone thinks and believes like you do it can also lead to an unrealistic and uniformed view of how things work for the whole of the population. To paraphrase my JC (junior college) social anthropology teacher, “what you many of you take to be the truth is really just your lived in experience…”