The brain’s way of protecting your favourite beliefs — even when they’re wrong.
Confirmation bias is what happens when the brain looks for evidence that supports what it already believes — and ignores, downplays, or explains away anything that challenges it.
It’s a built-in feature of human thinking.
What it looks like:
- Reading articles that confirm your opinion, and skipping the ones that don’t.
- Noticing the facts that support your view, and “forgetting” the ones that contradict it.
- Asking questions in a way that’s already slanted toward the answer you want.
- Surrounding yourself with people who agree with you — because disagreement feels like attack.
It feels like being right.
It’s actually just feeling safe.
Why it happens:
The mind doesn’t like being uncertain.
It doesn’t like being wrong.
It doesn’t like changing.
So it protects itself by building a little echo chamber — a mental bubble where the only voices allowed in are the ones that say, “Yes, exactly — well done.”
This doesn’t mean people are lying to themselves on purpose.
It means they’re only seeing what they want to see — and don’t realise what they’re missing.
Why it matters:
Confirmation bias:
- Makes people overconfident.
- Keeps bad ideas alive for far too long.
- Turns disagreement into hostility.
- Stops real learning from happening.
It doesn’t matter how smart a person is — if they’re only looking for evidence that proves they’re right, they’re not thinking.
They’re filtering reality to protect their ego.
Recognising confirmation bias doesn’t make it go away.
But it’s the first sign that actual thinking might be about to start.
Until then, people aren’t seeking truth.
They’re just polishing what they already believe.