Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to give more weight to information that aligns with one's own existing views. This is heavily related to the rampant labeling of dissenting opinions as fake news. no matter how strong a statement may be for or against our opinion we are more likely to give weight or believe statements that align with our views. for example, If you are a democrat you may view evidence that Fox News is biased as overwhelming; if you are a republican you may disregard the same evidence as weak or unconvincing.

Within our society, this idea has to lead to people attempting to discredit others for daring to have a dissenting opinion. of all ages, classes, and genders hate to be wrong and especially hate to be proven wrong however the age, race, class, and gender of the person making the statement is often used silence the person or discredit the statement as weak or incorrect by those whose opinions may differ. We see this a lot between the generations going in both directions. Boomers often discredit millennials claiming that global climate change exists and that we cannot simply get a job and buy a house. Boomers believe these problems are a result of communist propaganda and laziness but fail to justify their views and continue to use their experience that global warming is a lie and jobs are easy to find.

Most significant in America at this moment are the effect of confirmation bias when viewing news. No matter what side of the aisle you fall on what you think is what you will continue to believe. This is not always a conscience decision as our minds attempt to decrease cognitive dissonance (uneasy feeling caused by conflict).