How to use confirmation bias on purpose.

Have you ever spent a lot of time worrying that you might be fired based on zero evidence that anyone was unhappy with your work? This used to happen to me all the time when I first started working in my old corporate job. Before that job, I’d been laid off, and I hadn’t been expecting it. Because of that, I kept having the thought “it could happen again.” 

This might seem irrational, but it actually makes a lot of sense when you understand how the brain works. Because, in many ways, the brain is not rational. In fact, the brain has tons of biases that impact how we see and interpret the world. One of those biases is confirmation bias. Confirmation bias means that our brains seek and privilege information that matches our preconceived ideas and beliefs. This can apply to things we want to be true - seeing what we want to see. And it can also apply to things we don’t want to be true but that match our current beliefs - seeing what we are afraid is the case. 

Because I thought I could be fired at any time for any reason, I was afraid of being fired all the time. Anytime my boss needed to speak with me, anytime his tone was not wildly cheerful, anytime I made a mistake no matter how small. My brain had a story that I could get fired, and while I did not get fired, I created the emotional experience of being fired over and over, and I also interpreted every piece of data as potential evidence that my firing was imminent. 

Take a moment and think about how this bias may be playing out in your life. What does your brain obsessively worry about? What fears or concerns is your brain constantly collecting evidence for?

Let’s look at another example to see how this bias can play out. Let’s say you’re sitting at your desk and you’re trying to do some task, and you think it’s going to be hard. Confirmation bias will kick in and your brain will come up with all kinds of evidence about how hard and terrible it will be. It’s like a google search - whatever you’re looking for is what you will find. 

If you’re looking for evidence that things will be hard, that’s what your brain will show you. If you’re looking for evidence that your boss doesn’t like you, your brain will scan for data that supports that idea. It will also take neutral data and view it through the lens of making it match your belief. So, if, for instance, your boss declines your 1:1, your brain will see that as evidence that she doesn’t like you vs seeing that there could be many other reasons for her actions, including tons of things that have nothing at all to do with you. 

But confirmation bias doesn’t stop there. It will also suppress, ignore, or discount any data you have that contradicts your belief. So, your brain will ignore all of the evidence you have that your boss does, indeed, like you and think you’re great. And, inside your head, this will all seem very factual. It won’t seem like a subjective assessment that your brain is supporting with totally biased data. This is part of what makes bias so tricky - it seems very logical, even when it’s not. 

But, once you know about confirmation bias, you can actually use it on purpose. You can notice your brain wanting to build a case for how your boss doesn’t like you, and you can say to yourself, yes, that is one possibility, but what else could be happening here? It’s possible that her day is simply overbooked or she doesn’t feel well or even that her boss just dropped a big assignment on her plate.

Ok, maybe you can see it with your boss declining the 1:1, but what about that hard assignment? You can’t just tell yourself it’s actually easy, right? There’s more than one way to get around confirmation bias, but telling yourself something you totally don’t believe is not the way I’d recommend doing it. But you could ask yourself, “what’s easy about this?” Even in an assignment you currently consider difficult, there are usually easier parts. When you ask your brain, what’s easy about this, the underlying assumption is that something about it is easy. That ban be enough to kick off your confirmation bias. And if it says that nothing is easy, just say, ok, but what’s the easiest part, even if it’s all hard. That will begin to loosen your brain’s stranglehold on the idea that the work is hard and nothing but.

Another approach you can take is to come up with a new way of thinking that doesn’t argue with the idea that the work will be difficult but instead focuses on seeing that difficulty differently. For instance, you can look at that to-do item, and say to yourself, yes, it could be hard, but what else could it be? It could be fun, it could be challenging, it could be so satisfying when I get to the other side of it. Reframing in this way teaches your brain to see the idea of “hard work” differently and interpret it through a new lens, the lens of “this could be fun, satisfying, interesting, etc, even if it is hard.” This is a more subtle way of shifting, as we’re essentially offering your brain the idea that hard isn’t necessarily a bad thing while also shifting the main focus away from the perceived difficulty of the task. If you shift the focus from this is going to be hard to this is going to be satisfying, your confirmation bias will go with you. Your brain will be like, yeah, this IS going to be satisfying, and then it will do a new google search and it will come up with all the data to support that idea. This isn’t more true than this will be hard but it’s not less true either. They’re both subjective ways of seeing the world. But one is a lot more fun. 

How are you going to use confirmation bias in your favor today? 

If you want some support rewiring your confirmation bias to work for you, I’m currently accepting 1:1 coaching clients for August and September start dates. I’ve also got a few spots open for corporate speaking engagements. Learn more here.