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In the news article “Confidence Can Make You Miss Important Information,” Brookshire argues that confidence can make an individual fail to consider factual information, especially if that evidence contradicts their personal beliefs. The author attributes this habit to the human brain’s vulnerability to confirmation bias. According to it, people tend to seek and believe information which aligns with what they have already accepted and disregard details which demonstrate that they made a mistake. Brookshire uses people’s reaction to the coronavirus prevention measure, which required individuals to wear masks, to explain how confirmation bias made people miss significant information. In this example, individuals were confident and held to the initial assumptions that wearing a mask could not protect them from contracting the illness. As a consequence, many people ignored information stating that using these protective tools could help in terms of lowering the risk of becoming infected with the disease. Brookshire draws on the findings of two empirical studies which established that confidence could make the human brain recognize aspects which may demonstrate that a person errored.
I firmly support Brookshire’s argument that certainty can impair people’s ability to recognize essential information because human beings collect data selectively. This cognitive bias can be attributed to the tendency to recall particular decision-relevant details. I believe that this bias influences how people gather information, as well as how they interpret and remember past experiences. For instance, those who are opposed to a particular matter are likely to not only search for evidence to challenge it but also interpret news stories in a distorted manner which aligns with their existing hypotheses. They can also recollect details in a way which reinforces those prejudices. The cognitive bias helps individuals to protect their self-esteem and “influence people and social structures so that they come to match our beliefs about them” (Peters 1). Therefore, it is imperative to emphasize that confidence might lead to a distorted perception of reality.
Works Cited
Brookshire, Bethany. “Confidence Can Make You Miss Important Information.” Science News for Students, 2020.
Peters, Uwe. “What Is the Function of Confirmation Bias?” Erkenntnis, 2020, pp. 1–26.
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