From Confirmation Bias to A New Higher Possibility
[Music]
when i was
five years old my best friend in the
world
explained to me that the chocolate
cereal at her house
was good for us that’s right it
contained
all the vitamins and minerals we would
ever need to grow up big and strong
wait what seriously
i never knew that and after tasting it
i was positive she must be right
but as i learned a little bit more about
nutrition and
product labels new information started
creeping in
and my perspective started to shift and
even though i really
wanted her to be right i realized
we were wrong a few years after the
serial incident i overheard some adults
talking at a family gathering they were
talking about a friend of theirs who had
accidentally gotten pregnant later in
life
wait what accidentally gotten pregnant
no see i was eight and i knew
how babies were made and i was pretty
sure
nobody could do that by accident
i went home and talked to my mom about
it and i was pretty sure
she would say i was right and they were
wrong
you can imagine my surprise when i
learned from her that
honey sometimes people who love each
other
do that because it feels good
it’s even called making love
oh i was eight and that
no boys were gross and the process of
making babies was disgusting
well since then i’ve incorporated
some new information and my perspective
on that
has also shifted significantly
dare i say i was wrong
now the process of incorporating new
information and shifting beliefs
it’s a natural part of learning and we
do it very easily when we’re young
because we come from a beginner’s mind
where it’s okay to be wrong we’re
supposed to be learning things
being wrong is even cute sometimes but
as we get older we want to be more and
more
right about stuff being right becomes
very
very important and this is where the
problems begin
you see our perspective forms our world
view a lens through which we see things
and when we’re young our world view is a
little flexible because we’re always
incorporating new information
but as we get older our perspective
shifting
sort starts to stall or even halt
completely
and we human beings well meaning
we start pouring cement around it
and the new information as it goes by is
harder to get in
but if it agrees with our world
perspective it’s welcome
but if it doesn’t then it sort of hits
that
cement wall if you will when does this
start happening
and why confirmation
bias it’s a term that was coined in 1970
by english psychologist peter wassen
he found that people had a tendency
to prefer information that confirmed or
supported their existing beliefs
and they paid more attention to it and
they
overlooked or ignored that information
which did not
meet their existing beliefs in fact
a stanford did a study on this and they
found
that when participants were given false
information
and then information that clearly showed
that the information was false
that participants still clung to that
initial information
the study concluded saying that once
established beliefs
are remarkably resilient in the face of
empirical challenge
they were very hard to overturn
interesting so yeah there’s a sweet
seductive
pull of being right i’ve fallen into it
many times but if we’re actually
ignoring information that’s factually
correct
just because it doesn’t meet our current
world
view and we’re pretending it’s
not real then we’re sort of living in a
bit of a fantasy land
a fairy tale if you will
so i’d like to take you on a little
journey and this journey
begins with a fairy tale perhaps you
know it
once upon a time there was a little
mermaid who lived in a castle
under the sea she had a beautiful
singing voice
she was happy but restless she was ready
to see
something new so one day she ventures to
the surface
and she’s sitting on a rock happily
singing when along
comes a boat with a handsome prince
the prince is captivated by her
beautiful voice
but wouldn’t you know it before they can
meet
a storm comes up and rages and knocks
the prince unconscious and overboard
the mermaid rushes in and rescues him
and lays him gently on the beach
she is smitten he’s a handsome prince
after all
so she makes a deal to become human
so she can live with him forever
all she has to do is give up her view
beautiful voice
she does the two fall in love and live
happily ever after
lovely right a happy hopeful tale about
sacrificing in the name of true love
but let’s continue our journey and see
if we can look at this same tale
from another perspective
once upon a time there was a little
mermaid lived in a castle
under the sea yada yada singing
surface boat prince storm got it
mermaid rescues him lays him gently on
the beach
good so far right but then
what happens she gets it into her head
that she’s in love with him and makes a
deal to become
human with a witch all she has to do
is give up her friends
her family her royal crown
and get this her voice
she agrees to all of these terms without
negotiation
because she believes she must be in love
with the prince
and be with him forever the prince she
just met
a few hours ago oh wait technically they
haven’t even met because he was
unconscious
and all right
no matter the deal is done and she’s
turned human and deposited on the beach
the prince finds her naked on the beach
and falls for her immediately he assumes
that she’s also been a victim
of a shipwreck as he has but with no
voice the mermaid cannot explain to him
that she is no victim she’s actually the
hero
that rescued him when he was drowning
and now she’s the one who gave up
everything to be with him in the hopes
that he would
also kind of like to be with her forever
that said now the princess has no voice
to answer him
and so she can only agree in a series of
pathetic
smiley doe-eyed nods
really really and now they can
live happily ever after with a
relationship that’s based on a
serious lack of information and some
really
misguided beliefs i don’t think so
now that i could see from this
perspective i
saw the little mermaid for what it was a
dangerous
slippery slope fairy tale with some
deeply
misguided beliefs seated underneath no
no
it was wrong i was positive
and i took great joy in pointing this
out
to everyone else who would listen
can’t you see how they’re treating
this entire tale can’t you see what
they’re trying to teach
our children that it’s good to give up
your voice that it’s perfectly fine to
give up who you are for someone else
that it’s totally fine to neglect your
duties and responsibilities to your
community
and ignore leadership that it’s
perfectly fine
to do this without even negotiating
and signing off on contracts without
reading the fine print
absolutely not i was now on a mission
to reveal the truth of the little
mermaid
until one day when my very own
fairy godparents in the form of
three good friends and a bottle of wine
came to me and said oh kimberly
don’t you realize you need to stop
hating on the little mermaid
you need to show her some love some
compassion
don’t you realize she just made mistakes
she was doing the best she could with
what she had at the time
many of us have made the same mistakes
she has
even you wait
what no no no no no no no no
i would never make the same choices she
made
never never
so you can tell this is going to end
badly for me right
so never say never especially not when
you’re with your three
fairy godparents in a bottle of wine it
was a heated discussion
for sure that evening i didn’t want to
be wrong i
loved being right about the little
mermaid
but as the night wore on i took a long
hard compassionate loving look back at
my own life
and i saw that there were times
that i had given up who i really was for
someone else there were times that i’d
failed to be there for people who needed
me
there were times that i had achieved
heroic deeds only to downplay them later
and there were times that i’d
given up my voice but now that i could
see that
i could decide to make different choices
now that i could see it from this
perspective
i could be better next time i could
do things differently and i liked that
i had shifted with a little help from my
friends
so if you’ve come along on this journey
with me today maybe you’ve felt
something
shift for you as well if you have it was
actually two things shifting
one is your willingness to incorporate
new information
and the second is your willingness to
break through that
concrete and shift your belief a little
bit
about what the new information meant
now shifting beliefs is hard it’s
scary and depending on how long you’ve
held those beliefs
it can even feel terrifying and our
fight or
flight can kick in that is exactly what
i was doing with my fairy godparents
that night
i was pushing away the information i was
running from it
why because i was scared i was scared i
was wrong
i was scared i was wrong about the
little mermaid sure but i was scared
that i was wrong about me
about how i was showing up in the world
and once i shifted i realized
that i could do something about it and i
felt a lot better in fact it felt
not scary at all but like a weight had
been lifted
it felt like i was stepping out of some
weird sticky fairy tale i
told for myself and back into my
real life now remember that stanford
study
that showed that people ignore
information when it doesn’t fit their
world view
well harvard did a similar study and
they found very similarly that
76 of people clung to the rightness of
their belief
even when presented with concrete facts
to the contrary
but they found something else very
hopeful as well
they saw that in that narrow margin of
24
of people who did shift their belief
that they were six
times more likely to achieve their end
goal
so yes shifting your beliefs is hard
scary terrifying difficult
but when we do lovely things can happen
so in fairy tales right and wrong is
often portrayed as good and evil or
black and white but ladies and gentlemen
real life is not a fairy tale
it’s a journey and
it’s a journey of beautiful new
perspectives
it’s not about something silly and
simplistic like being right or wrong
so here we are you and me
in real life and i encourage you i
invite you to set down that sticky
compelling need to be right and instead
walk into a new world
a world where it’s okay to be wrong
where it’s okay to think from a
beginner’s mind
it’s okay to believe that we all have
very godparent
best friends who are willing to help us
along this journey when we get stuck
a world where making love is about
way more than making babies and a world
where that delicious chocolate cereal
well maybe not nutritious
can feed us in a lot of different ways
so i’ll leave you with this i believe
that if we’re able to set down the fairy
tale
of being right and we’re able to shake
off some of that cement and shift our
perspective
and we’re able to allow all the
information
in whether it agrees with us or not
that we can enjoy this glorious
delicious journey called
real life and we can do it
happily ever after
you