Why People Are So Stubborn: Confirmation Bias

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Are you stubborn? Do you know someone else who is? Chances are the answer to at least one of these questions is yes. Now before you click away, yes I am low key calling you stubborn, but I'm also calling me stubborn. Stubbornness, that is, the tendency to disregard other peoples' beliefs in a determination to not change one's attitude about something, is not only extremely common, but also present in every single one of us to some capacity. This is because stubbornness is actually wired into our brains. The question then becomes, well why are we stubborn? I'm glad you asked! 

There's this concept in psychology known as confirmation bias, and it's so ever present in our everyday life, from our news, friends, and even in psychological studies themselves! That's how powerful this principle is: it can skew and alter scientific evidence and information. Raymond Nickerson, PhD from Tufts University defines confirmation bias in his article, Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises as: "the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand." Simply put, confirmation bias is the tendency for us to seek out information that affirms our beliefs and disregard information that goes against those beliefs. 

So let's say I have a firmly held belief that an authority figure, for example a professor, is out to get me. I've based this on the fact that they always call me out in class, give me harsher grades on assignments, and don't respond to my email inquiries as promptly as they do other students. Then if I get a bad grade on an exam, it's not because I didn't study, it's because that professor is out to get me right? 

Well, what if that professor wasn't out to get me at all. In fact, what if that professor actually thought very highly of me? I didn't consider the fact that they always call me out in class because they know I understand the material and want me to share that knowledge with the class, or that they give me harsher grades on assignments because they know I'm capable of so much more than what I'm producing, or that they don't respond to my emails quickly because they know I have a good grasp on the material so they can prioritize other students who may be struggling more. I didn't even consider any of these confounding explanations for what was happening because I knew that this professor was out to get me. So I sought out information that would confirm my belief, and disregarded all of the information that went against it. 

Nickerson sites prior research that found that in a mock jury trial, participants who used evidence selectively, that is spent a large amount of time building up a case for only one side, expressed significantly greater confidence in the fact that they made the right decision than those who tried to spontaneously weigh the cases for both sides equally. This is so important. Our beliefs become much more hardened when we only look at things from one side, and when we take into considerations all aspects of something from multiple viewpoints, things get much more ambiguous. 

This is to say that when we have open dialogue with people who actively disagree with us, we become more tolerant of their point of view and begin to accept their truths into our worldview. Suddenly our worldview becomes less and less blindingly strong and we can start to combat this very powerful psychological phenomenon that has been hardwired into our brains. 

So why is confirmation bias hardwired into our brains? Well usually having a set of strongly held beliefs and testing things against those beliefs is efficient. In my post about technology and love I go into how the brain is always looking to try and maximize efficiency and minimize inefficiency. Because of this, our brains are actually set up to easily accept and perpetuate confirmation bias. If someone came along and told me that giraffes fly around all the time spinning their necks like a propeller and I had a firmly held belief that giraffes don't fly around spinning their necks like a propeller, I could easily and efficiently dismiss that person's truth claim based on my worldview. Now that's a silly example I know, but let's apply it to something else, like say gravity. I believe that gravity exists. If someone comes along saying that gravity doesn't exist, they would have a higher burden of proof put on them to persuade me otherwise, due to my strongly held belief that gravity does in fact exist. This way we can efficiently filter out the nonsense of the world and spend our time and energy focused on doing other things. 

So, stubborn people are stubborn because it's efficient and easy to be due to confirmation bias. Everyone falls prey to confirmation bias on almost a daily basis.  Recognizing the fact that we are looking for evidence that affirms our beliefs and disregarding evidence that invalidates them is one of the best ways we can realize what's going on and make behavior changes accordingly. So next time you're talking to, or are maybe being a stubborn person yourself, remember that everyone has a reason for believing something. Trying to understand why other people believe what they believe is a great first step towards fostering tolerance and productive, educational dialogue. 

If you enjoyed this week's post, please feel free to leave a like or a comment down below! Also if you have any questions, or want to let me know you hate my guts, you can send me an email to brainfood@brainfoodblog.com.