The other people’s biases

Did you notice how the media are the same everywhere? In every places, there seems to be a few of them telling the truth while the others ones are just there to manipulate us, cherry-picking the news and distorting reality to fit their agenda?

Did you also notice how wrong the other religions are? And the worst with them is that they’re not even conscious of how wrong they are. How could they ever get clarity if they don’t broaden their view first?

Did you ever wonder why it’s so difficult for the people of the other side to simply understand that they’ve been mislead? If we got it, they should be able to get it too, shouldn’t they?

Hell is just – other people.

Jean-Paul Sartre

I’m with you on this and it came as a shock to me when I discovered that they think exactly the same about us !

For them, our media are biased.
For them, they have clarity.
For them, we’ve been mislead.

Who is right then?

Us of course!
But then, if I’m right now, then it means that I would be wrong if my life, my experiences and my interactions had made me feel the opposite way…

But would I be so much wronger?
And most importantly, would I know it?

Is it possible that we’re not so different from them after all?
Is it possible that we’re all biased?

Our biases

It seems that we may be part of the issue here and when checking a little more deeply, we quickly discover what is named the Confirmation Bias also known as My Side Bias.

You see, there is an expression in NLP that states the following:

The thinker thinks, the prover proves.

NLP trainers & coaches

This 6-words sentence explains exactly what this cognitive bias is about. We all have values & beliefs and our brain is very, very efficient at confirming them for us.

We often consciously discard as fallacious or ignore the arguments we disagree with but we also do this unconsciously even more often!

Like all biases, it’s sneaky since we’re not conscious we’re doing it. It’s the reason why we all feel like douches with the ones we disagree with and we don’t understand why they’re so sensitive.

It’s just as if we did not hear what they said as we considered it wrong before even giving it an objective thought.

It’s also the reason why we feel so much better when talking with people we already agree with.

What can we do about this?

There are a few things you can do to be more open-minded:

• Be present and focused on what the others say. Listen carefully without thinking how wrong they are or about what you will say next… Just listen. It takes practice but you’ll get better at it with time.
• Read/watch news from the other side, follow people with different opinions on social media and discuss with them.
• Pro tip: You can also discuss about what you agree on. 🙂
• Ask yourself why you believe what you believe.
  Challenge these answers, it’s a good time to try some What if questions.

And you, what do you do to counter the confirmation bias?

---

Thanks to Gordon Johnson for the illustration.