The inner life
Confirmation Bias
Direct answer
Confirmation Bias: Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for, notice and remember information that supports what one already believes, and to overlook or discount what goes against it.
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At a glance
- Also called
- myside bias
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Cognitive Dissonance, Conspiracy Theory, Proportionality Bias, Falsifiability
Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for, notice and remember information that supports what one already believes, and to overlook or discount what goes against it.
A plain educational schematic; it does not diagnose a condition or replace professional care.
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What is confirmation bias?
Confirmation bias is a habit of attention shared by everyone. Once a person holds a view, evidence for it seems striking and easy to recall, while evidence against it seems weak, gets explained away or is simply not looked for. The belief then feels better supported than it is.
Confirmation Bias works at three points: in what a person searches for, in how they read what they find, and in what they remember afterwards. It is strongest where feeling runs high and where the belief is tied to a group. It does not mean the belief is wrong. It means the believer's sense of the evidence cannot be trusted without a deliberate check.
On the tree of the hidden arts: The sixth sense, Conspiracies, examined.
What sets Confirmation Bias apart
The bias lies in the search as much as in the judgment. Wason's subjects were not stubborn; they simply never thought to try a case that would break their rule, so every test came back yes. Later work separated three stages, seeking, interpreting and recalling, and found the effect in each. It is sometimes called myside bias, and studies find it no weaker in people who score high on tests of reasoning.
- Described by: Peter Wason, English psychologist, in a paper of 1960
- His test: the 2-4-6 task: find the rule behind a series of three numbers
- Older statement: Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620
- Three stages: biased search, biased reading and biased memory
- Also called: myside bias
Often mistaken for something else: Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort felt when a belief meets a contrary fact; confirmation bias works earlier, by keeping the contrary fact from being noticed at all.
The story behind Confirmation Bias
The English psychologist Peter Wason described the effect in an experiment published in 1960. He gave people the numbers 2, 4, 6, told them the series followed a rule, and asked them to find it by proposing other triples. Most tested only triples that fitted their first guess and never tried to break it. The observation is older: Francis Bacon wrote in 1620 that the mind, once it has adopted an opinion, draws everything else to support it.
Why Confirmation Bias matters
Confirmation Bias explains how an honest, intelligent person can gather a great pile of evidence for something false.
How to read Confirmation Bias
Readers apply it as a check on themselves: before trusting a belief, they go looking for the strongest case against it.
Confirmation Bias in practice: an example
Someone sure that a full Moon brings bad nights recalls every restless one and forgets the full Moons they slept through.
Where readings of Confirmation Bias go wrong
Spotting the bias in an opponent is easy and settles nothing; the test is whether one applies it to one's own side.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- confirmation bias meaning, confirmation bias examples, myside bias, what is confirmation bias
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is confirmation bias?
It is the tendency to seek out, notice and remember what agrees with an existing belief and to pass over what does not. Everyone has it, and it makes beliefs feel better founded than they are.
How can confirmation bias be reduced?
By asking what would show the belief to be wrong and looking for exactly that, by reading the best argument of the other side, and by writing down predictions before checking them.
