Friday, November 03, 2006

Confirmation bias

Just been reading a great article on confirmation bias. This was by Michael Shermer in Scientific American and not brand new (see link below). Why do we always find overwhelming support in favour of what we believe in? And more importantly why do others (with different opinions) not seem to understand this overwhelming evidence and just give in??

The answer lies in confirmation bias. And in fact has a physiological basis. There is more in his article but MRI scans were used on a sample "strong" political supporters assessing speeches by Kerry and Bush in the run up to the 2004 elections. In each case, when faced with statements containing internal contradictions they tended to "let off" their man and criticise strongly the opposition. Most interestingly of all:

"The neuroimaging results, however, revealed that the part of the brain most associated with reasoning--the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex--was quiescent. Most active were the orbital frontal cortex, which is involved in the processing of emotions; the anterior cingulate, which is associated with conflict resolution; the posterior cingulate, which is concerned with making judgments about moral accountability; and--once subjects had arrived at a conclusion that made them emotionally comfortable--the ventral striatum, which is related to reward and pleasure."

Listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 (BBC) will never be the same again armed with this information.

This has fascinating implications around business decisionmaking. It could explain so much about my main area of activity - project management - which has such a notorious track record for failure - why do people never see the evidence.

The essence of this has been known for a long time. Remember how, in Ancient Rome, any General, when riding through Rome in Triumph after a great victory would have a slave on the chariot holding the laurel wreath over his head and whispering in his ear "remember you are only human".

Mmm somehow I am sure I will need to return to this whole subject.

To read more in Scientific American follow this:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=000CE155-1061-1493-906183414B7F0162