confirmation bias psychology example — 4 dave gave me

a working confirmation bias psychology example, the kind a textbook would frame neatly, runs roughly like this. a study lands in your lap that backs the gut. you nod. then a second study contradicts it, and suddenly the methodology is your hobby. the suspicion only ever points one way. that is, on a friday at the corner bar, the entire trick.

friday, 4:18pm, in the back booth at the corner bar two blocks east of the office. mike has wiped the same patch of counter for an hour. the office expected me back from “lunch” at three. company time, technically, but the company has stopped asking for an itemized account of the part of the day that goes missing.

so. dave called. dave calls when he has a theory and needs an audience that will not bill him for the consultation. dave wanted to hand me a clean confirmation bias psychology example — although dave did not call it that, because dave does not use clinical language unless he is talking to a claims adjuster. the larger frame is the pillar piece on a brain that mostly votes for itself. this post is one phone call inside that pillar, with mom on the other line, allegedly.

confirmation bias psychology example: a confirmation bias psychology example is when a person treats a single supportive case as proof, while quietly disqualifying contradictory ones. the brain plays lawyer and jury at once. dave produced four of these on one phone call. each sounded, inside, like evidence. each was, outside, the bias.

FOUR. EXAMPLES. ONE. PHONE. CALL.

the confirmation bias psychology example dave gave on the phone

dave’s opening salvo was about a man at his gym who lifts in jeans. dave has, over six months, observed this man lifting in jeans on three sessions. on three data points, dave concluded the man lifts only in jeans. he then admitted he had also seen the man in proper gym shorts on a saturday. that observation, dave clarified, “did not count.” the saturday was, in dave’s framing, “probably a fluke.”

that is the confirmation bias psychology example, mid-air, from a man who would deny being its example if you read it back to him slowly. three pro-jeans points, one anti-jeans point, and the brain quietly rebrands the inconvenient one as a fluke. the fluke, in psychology terms, does the heavy lifting. the working definition for the wider family of mental shortcuts covers the architecture, but dave was operating it without the manual.

i told dave what he had just done. dave said, “no, but in his case.” dave’s whole life is “no, but in his case.” dave laughed for nine straight minutes the time i tried to explain compound interest with a pepper shaker. nine. i timed it. that laugh, by my own bias, is the one example i can produce of dave failing to listen — and on one laugh, i now believe dave never listens. i am, mid-call, also a confirmation bias psychology example. the symmetry is unflattering and entirely fair.

mom heard the whole thing, allegedly, on the other line

mom called dave’s apartment six minutes in, which dave answered on a different handset, which means mom was — by her own admission and the small breathing under the line — listening to both of us at once. mom said hello and went conspicuously quiet, the way she does when she has decided to gather material for a sunday call. mom collects evidence on her sons the way some people collect stamps. she does not display the collection. she just keeps it.

mom’s bias is the most efficient one in the family. she decided, around 2008, that dave is “the responsible one” and i am “the one she worries about,” and every fact since has been sorted, without effort, into the correct drawer. dave once forgot her birthday three years running. that did not move him out. i once paid my own rent six months in a row. that did not move me out either. she knew, in the unfalsifiable sense. mothers know. it is their power. it cannot be defeated by data.

mom said, after a long pause, “your brother makes a good point.” this was not an evaluation. this was a verdict. the verdict had been on file since 2008. the call was just the paperwork.

the third yoga mat, exhibit b in the example

around minute fourteen, dave pivoted to the third yoga mat. the third yoga mat lives under my couch since 2023, used generously one and a half times. dave brought it up because dave loves a piece of physical evidence he can hold against me from a different city.

here is the example as it relates to the mat. i bought it because i had decided, in advance, that i was a person who needed a third mat. the first two had failed, in my private telling, for “different reasons.” one was thin. one smelled like a poorly stored tire. the third, i told myself, was the right one. i would not have admitted this was the same procedure i had run twice with the same outcome. that is the bias holding the door open for itself. you do not call the third attempt “the third attempt.” you call it “the right one this time.”

dave knew the count because dave knows everyone’s counts. mom, on the other line, made a small assenting noise. mom, in her drawer, had this filed under “we don’t worry about him for nothing.”

the airpod, the one airpod, the singular

the fourth confirmation bias psychology example dave produced was about the single AirPod. i own one. binaural sound is, in my apartment, a luxury priced out of my listening practice. i lost the second — left, i think — in the back of an uber in march, although it could have been february. the timeline is vague because the timeline serves the bias.

i had told myself, after the loss, that “one AirPod is fine, actually,” and “podcasts are a mostly mono medium anyway.” both statements are bias on bias. the first reframes a loss as a preference. the second invents a fact about media to justify it. i hold these positions with the tone of a man who has done the research. i have, at most, listened to one ear’s worth of three podcasts and called the experiment conclusive.

dave, who has two AirPods that work and a case that closes properly, laughed when i defended the single. “you’ve been saying podcasts are mono since march.” dave was right. mom remained silent. mom was, presumably, filing.

the wip 2022 list as confirmation, also

the wip 2022 list is a one-page confirmation bias psychology example by itself. it is a sheet from january 2022 on which i wrote, in good handwriting, twelve “works in progress.” three got finished. nine did not. when i look at it now — and i look more than is healthy — i remember the three and forget the nine. i remember being a man who finishes things, on three out of twelve, while the nine sit there in plain blue ink, unchecked.

the list does not lie. the brain reads it selectively. the eye lands on the checkmarks and slides past the empty boxes. showers over 4 minutes are theatre. i wrote that near the bottom, in 2022. i still believe it. it is, possibly, the only item on the list that was finished before it was written.

verdict, every example confirms the bias the bias was looking for

so the verdict, by the eleventh swipe of mike’s counter, is that every confirmation bias psychology example on the call did the work the bias wanted. dave’s man in jeans confirmed dave’s belief about the man. my third mat confirmed my belief the next mat would be the right one. my single AirPod confirmed my belief that podcasts are mono. mom’s silence confirmed her drawer from 2008. the wip 2022 list confirmed that i finish things. each one a small private courtroom in which the verdict had been written before the trial.

there is a film called a comedy where a tobacco lobbyist argues anything he is paid to argue, and it works as a useful contrast. the lobbyist is doing the bias on purpose, with a paycheck. the rest of us are doing it for free, on a friday, in a back booth. the lobbyist at least gets the suit.

5:02pm. dave hung up to take a call from someone whose name i did not catch. mom hung up first, four seconds before, with the small click of a person who has gathered enough material.

i closed three of the eleven tabs i had open. i kept eight. the eight held the studies that agreed with whatever i was going to write. that is, also, the bias, identified mid-paragraph, too late to do anything useful about.