Confirmation Bias via Social Media

 "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Planck

That statement is a pretty cynical view of the ability to argue and reason via dialogue, but it may well sum up where we are in the burgeoning golden age of social media. As we enter the point of global social media saturation, the use of the medium informs - and skews - our ability to share multiple perspectives. Ironic, isn't it? That the medium that seemingly shrinks the distance between people and ideas is often actually limiting us in our rational dialogue? Of course at its best social media provide terrific formats for conversation, idea sharing and knowledge acquisition. But unmediated, open venues are spaces where bullheaded persuasion is the key to determining what information has value. 

The truth now, according to Cordelia Fine, is "established less by the noble use of reason than by the stubborn exertion of will." This stubborn exertion of will is our commitment to our own ideas - to sticking to our beliefs and mindsets.

According to Stanovich, West and Toplak (2013), confirmation bias (or "myside bias") occurs "when people evaluate evidence, generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own prior opinions and attitudes." Confirmation bias is when we agree with something because it supports or aligns with what we already believe. It can be dangerous and limiting to our ability to have rational conversations and it's being amplified by social media.

You've likely heard Twitter being referred to as an "echo chamber."  An idea is shared and it's regurgitated over and over and suddenly it's just what 1,000 others have said and it loses it's impact. I first heard this term from T.J. Logan and have carried it with me when thinking about how I share and interact on social media. The echo chamber encourages and promotes confirmation bias - it keeps us in the same circles of thought and locks us into patterns of acting.

It's the easy thing to do, though. We fall in line with what others are saying. We take the popular perspective and tell ourselves we agree with it and then refuse to bring in other perspectives. (And even when we say we're open to other perspectives, our actions and words don't always support that. It's true. Don't deny it... we all do it).

Confirmation bias is the exact opposite of what we tell our students every day. We help our students move away from dualistic thinking from the moment they walk in the door, yet we often end up seeing ideas as "right" and "wrong" online. As a result, our actions in promoting our "right" and denouncing the "wrong" are not helpful models of rational thought and positive dialogue.

Many of us put off anything that might challenge us or make us uncomfortable - anything that falls outside our comfort zone. Behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner called this cognitive dissonance - when something we hold true or right is challenged and it pushes us to question our own beliefs... to question if what we thought was "right" is actually right anymore. But allowing outside perspectives to challenge us drives us toward conversations that eliminate duality and promote the very thing we encourage students to do - think globally, think from varied and diverse perspectives, respect the opinions of others. Social media gives us a powerful tool for letting other perspectives influence us if we take off the blinders of confirmation bias and avoid the echo chamber.

We see confirmation bias show through on big, vital, human topics like Ferguson and Eric Garner. But we also see it sneak into trivial, everyday conversations like college football playoff rankings. But letting confirmation bias affect thinking on the small things (like college football) trains us to let it affect how we think about critical moral and ethical issues (like privilege and race).

In his book "Digital Leader," Erik Qualman talks about the role we have in social media to create awareness and engagement. Qualman writes "Remember that influence has surpassed information in terms of importance because information is cheap and easily accessible." Reason, influence and dialogue evidently are not as cheap. So how are you using your digital influence to encourage dialogue? How are you avoiding confirmation bias in your digital engagement to allow others space to share, learn and grow regardless of whether their opinion is different than your own?

Our innate motivation to connect to those who share our point of view is important, but it's finding significance in arguments and opinions in opposition to our own thinking that make us better critical thinkers and better educators, particularly in the digital spaces we occupy. I hope we can all agree on that.