What is confirmation bias and how can you avoid it?

Confirmation bias is a cognitive tendency where one favors information that confirms their beliefs or values, disregarding or downplaying evidence that contradicts them. This can lead to selective perception, memory, and attention, potentially hindering objective decision-making. To avoid confirmation bias, be aware of your biases, actively seek contradictory information, encourage a devil's advocate, promote open communication, diversify information sources, use neutral language, challenge assumptions, employ critical thinking, delay judgments, create decision-making processes, use decision-support tools, keep an open mind, reflect on past decisions, seek feedback, practice empathy, and educate yourself on cognitive biases.

O viés de confirmação é uma tendência cognitiva que leva as pessoas a buscar, interpretar e lembrar informações de uma forma que confirme suas crenças e opiniões. Ele limita nossa capacidade de analisar diferentes perspectivas e de considerar fatos que vão contra nossas ideias. Para evitá-lo, é necessário desenvolver o pensamento crítico e estar sempre aberto a questionar e revisar nossas próprias convicções. É importante buscar informações em fontes diversas e confiáveis, além de estar disposto a aceitar opiniões e ideias que divergentes. É preciso cultivar a empatia e o diálogo, buscando compreender o ponto de vista do outro antes de discordar ou rejeitar. Isso nos ajuda a evita que fiquemos presos em um único ponto de vista.

There is a potential anchoring bias when an article is focused specifically on confirmation bias. When we recognize the anchor, additional information becomes more visible. That other piece of information cited here is availability bias. I find that recency effects tend to dominate conversations and attention. That comes down to availability bias. Discussions around confirmation bias are far more prevalent, and this can shape what we focus on. A nuanced understanding of bias is the greatest support we can give ourselves to improve our critical thinking competencies.

I personally believe that it is important to always have an open mind and to be curious about other perspectives. Just because something has always been done a certain way, and you are receiving confirmation from other parties, there may be others with diverse ways of thinking or who have had different work and life experiences that may see the problem, issue, etc., in a different way. By exploring all perspectives in a non-judgemental way, teams may be able to improve and optimize to achieve superior outcomes.

Be aware of your own biases! This can also include where you are sourcing your information and what you choose to read/include in your information gathering. Some of this is not within your control - for example, search engines and social media use algorithms to show you results/info that is most relevant to your own posts/prior searches, so it is showing you search results that are already biased to favor your ideas/experiences/opinions/etc. However, knowing this, you can seek out alternative sources and/or try searching specifically for information from different viewpoints and sources (or just try using different key words to search!)