Don’t let confirmation bias get in the way of making smart decisions!
Confirmation bias is a psychological phenomenon that can have a profound impact on your business. In short, it’s the tendency we all have to seek out information that confirms our beliefs and avoid that which contradicts them. At its most extreme, confirmation bias can lead us to reject evidence entirely—in other words, believe something despite any evidence to the contrary.
Confirmation bias is a tendency to search for, interpret, favor and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs. It is a type of cognitive bias. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.
People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations) and propaganda effects (when propaganda is believed because of pre-existing biases).
In decision-making, confirmation biases may lead people to make poor decisions due to poor quality or limited quantity of information upon which they base their choices.
The first step in avoiding confirmation bias is to look for information that contradicts your own beliefs. Be on the lookout for data points that don’t fit with your model and that could potentially disprove it. This can be a bit tricky, because it’s easy to miss these pieces of evidence when they’re not what you were looking for.
The second step is to look at the situation from an opposing point of view—or several opposing points of view. Rather than relying solely on internal data or other people who have been involved with your company since day one, seek out feedback from people who are new and unfamiliar with your product or service. You might find they have perspectives you’ve never considered before!
Finally, ask someone else what they think about what you’re doing: “If I told them my idea right now, would their response be ‘why would anyone ever do that?’ Or would it be more along the lines of ‘I get why someone might want this’?” Often times entrepreneurs become so emotionally invested in their ideas (and so close to them) that they don’t see how others could possibly relate or agree with them.
Confirmation bias is a normal human phenomenon, but, that doesn’t make it any less dangerous, though. The fact that you can be misled by your own brain is bad enough in itself, but the consequences for startups are even worse.
One way you can avoid confirmation bias is to find a coach, advisor or mentor that’s not deeply embedded in your industry or segment of it. They will bring different opinions, perspectives, and experiences which is infinitely valuable as this will help you avoid group-think which can often mask confirmation bias.
Don’t let confirmation bias get in the way of making smart decisions!
