Our Minds in Echoes
In a time of constant information overload, where everything is breaking at the speed of light, and emotion matters more than fact, one psychological phenomenon which subtly rules the way we understand truth, and this phenomenon is confirmation bias. This is one of the psychological phenomena, the bias towards information that complies with our prior beliefs, which is central to how we approach our news, especially fake or poor-quality news. However, behind this practice is a convincing story about the neuroscience of our brains being programmed to pursue validation, and not truth.
What is Confirmation Bias?
Confirmation bias is not just a bad habit, not an insult, and not a mere cognitive tendency, but a much deeper-seated cognitive process. It was named after English psychologist Peter Wason in the 1960s and is our tendency to filter information in the direction that we already believe. Applied to the sphere of news, it translates to the idea that when a claim is both doubtful and aligned with our worldview, we are more likely to believe it, and when an otherwise reliable report is incompatible with our worldview, we will be less willing to accept it as true.
It would be best explained by Dr. Raymond Nickerson, professor of psychology at Tufts University. It was explained in his 1998 paper:
“The confirmation bias is perhaps the most potent and pervasive of all the cognitive biases… it affects the way we gather information, interpret it, and even how we remember it.”
The Neurobiology of Bias
Neuroscience shows that confirmation bias is not just a quality; it is biological. One study by the University of Southern California, in 2016, placed subjects in an fMRI scanner and examined how they were processing politically charged information. The results indicated heightened activity in the default mode network (DMN)--a brain structure correlated to self-referential thinking-- when the individuals were exposed to evidence that disproved their beliefs.
More conspicuously, the amygdala, which is associated with emotional responses such as anger or fear, became activated during such situations of cognitive dissonance. It means that conflicting information is not only intellectually processed, but it is also a threat, which is processed emotionally.
Conversely, the ventral striatum, which is relevant to reward and pleasure, was more active when they were presented with something that confirmed.
As lead author, Dr. Jonas Kaplan stated:
“Changing your beliefs about an emotionally charged idea requires working against the emotional centers of your brain, which are very powerful.”
That is, it feels (biochemically) good to confirm news that suits our worldview. And disagreeing? It is like experiencing pain.
Fake News Thrives on Recognition
It is not the believability of fake news but its comfortable familiarity that thrives. A 2019 MIT study found that false news is six times faster compared to true news on Twitter. Why? Fake news is frequently framed in a way that reinforces what we already suspect, hope, or fear, thus it will be more emotionally appealing- and more shareable.
It is neuroscientifically associated with the mere-exposure effect: the more regularly we hear a certain idea, the more inclined we are to accept it as true, even when it is not. Strength through repetition adds to fluency, and fluency is said to be the truth.
An experiment conducted by the University of Illinois in 2020 revealed that people who have been exposed to a set of headlines (real or fake) repeatedly were more inclined to report them as true as time progressed, just because they read them more often. This is of particular concern in the era of algorithmic newsfeeds, when filter bubbles mean we only tend to see the news that we already agree with.
Dopamine and Digital Addiction
Neurochemistry is also involved outside of brain structures. The process of consuming news, particularly the confirmation news, provokes the release of dopamine, which is the same neurotransmitter associated with addictive behaviors. It is what social media systems are built to take advantage of: engagement (likes, sharing, comments), which confirms prejudices by presenting the user with more of what they already concur with.
According to Dr. Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, her emphasis is:
“People experience a dopamine hit when they encounter information that confirms what they believe, which reinforces the behavior of seeking more of it.”
This results in something of a neural feedback loop over time: confirmation -> pleasure -> repetition -> entrenchment of bias.
Memory, Misinformation, and Cognitive Immunity
Memory is not a recorder--it is reconstructive. New information that falls into our belief pattern is more apt to be distorted and retrieved incorrectly, but with confidence. This is particularly so in the case of emotional misinformation.
Daniel Schacter, a Harvard psychologist, refers to this as confirmation bias, memory distortion. After being encoded into memory, it may prove more difficult to do away with the misinformation, even in cases where corrective information is provided. Indeed, corrections may work against them, so that people keep on with the initial lie all the more firmly, otherwise referred to as the backfire effect.
This puts into question the premise that a higher level of facts = a lower level of fake news. There are simply times when facts are not sufficient.
Cultural Cognition and Group Identity
Group identity also lends itself to the inclination to let information in or out. Recent studies by Yale Law professor Dan Kahan on cultural cognition have shown that individuals interpret facts according to their cultural affiliations. As an example, liberals and conservatives will give the same climate data different interpretations, not due to misunderstanding, but rather because of something called motivated reasoning: a cognitive process in which our desires influence our decisions.
The desire to belong to a social group may be more important than accuracy in group-based contexts. Reading fake news in belief thus becomes a social cue: It is a marker of belonging: I am one of you.
The Rewiring of the Brain: Fighting Confirmation After All?
Although we cannot completely eradicate confirmation bias, neuroscience provides us with a silver lining about neuroplasticity tactics for minimizing it:
- Metacognition - Thinking about what we think engages the prefrontal cortex and allows us to counteract the emotional impulse.
- Cognitive empathy Cognitive empathy Cognitive empathy By actively entertaining the opposite side of an argument, a person develops new neuro-connections and decreases amygdala reactivity.
- Mindfulness training. It is found that mindfulness stimulates the gray matter volume in self-awareness regions and minimizes the default mode activity that breaks bias-forming routines.
Even such tools as prebunking (pre-exposing individuals to typical misinformation strategies) proved to make people more immune to fake news.
Truth is not an instinct; it is a discipline
Evolution does not aim at achieving objectiveness; it makes our brains resist change in identity. Now, here in a world awash with custom headlines and algorithmic feedback loops, confirmation bias is not only a psychological oddity but a civic menace as well. It is
important to understand the neuroscientific basis of such things, not to chide our brains, but as a means of training our brains to intellectual humility.
According to Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a neuroscientist and the author of How Emotions Are Made, it is best articulated:
“The brain is a prediction machine. It exists not to know the truth, it exists to live.”
However, this is the truth today that we rely on to survive. The war on fake news, therefore, will start with the biology of belief-and our readiness to doubt what we are most confident about.