Why your brain prefers convincing others to being right
Hi there, it’s Adam from Untools,
One topic I haven’t yet covered on Untools is cognitive biases. They affect all of us and it’s fascinating to study why they exist. And it’s ever challenging to combat them.
In this newsletter, we’ll look at confirmation bias specifically and how to use the Ladder of Inference to mitigate its negative effects.
Confirmation bias: Why do we seek to be right?
People have a tendency to select information that support what they already believe. This confirmation bias is one of the most common mental shortcuts, or heuristics, that people have evolved to process a lot of information quickly and make fast decisions.
Illustration of confirmation bias
And confirmation bias’ close cousin is motivated reasoning. They’re quite similar but there’s a nuanced difference between them:
Confirmation bias is the tendency to selectively pay attention to information or interpret it in a way what confirms our existing beliefs.
Motivated reasoning is actively seeking information and making conclusions that support what we already believe.
The common theme is that by nature, we’re more inclined to see and find why we’re right rather than the opposite.
Both biases play a role in many situations in life: In team meetings, you'll find stronger evidence for projects you personally favour while being more critical of ideas that don't excite you. In personal life, you’ll focus more on positive reviews of that tech gadget your already like.
And confirmation bias is perhaps most visible in debates and arguments: people more often want to convince the other side that they’re right instead of finding the truth.
Since these biases usually play out unconsciously, it’s almost too easy to make a bad decision and overlook important data or evidence. We can counter it by deliberately going through our reasoning process step by step when it matters.
Learn more about 9 common cognitive biases like confirmation bias, sunk cost fallacy, availability heuristic and more, along with practical strategies for countering them.
Untools Vault members get this cognitive biases toolkit with PDF reference cards today.
Vault also gives you access to all Untools premium templates and monthly exclusive deep dives.
Use Ladder of Inference to counter confirmation bias
Reasoning consciously step by step is exactly what Ladder of Inference is for. Developed by a former Harvard professor Chris Argyris, it’s a simple framework that brilliantly highlights how quickly we can jump to (often wrong) conclusions and help us reason more objectively.
The Ladder consists of 7 steps: from observable data to what we pay attention to (this is where confirmation bias kicks in), how we interpret that and eventually make conclusions which form our beliefs and we take action based on them.
7 steps of the Ladder of Inference
To use this to improve your reasoning, try to first identify on which step of the ladder you currently are. Are you about to take action and you're not sure if it's the right one? Or perhaps you're aware of some of the assumptions you're making?
Then work your way down before building your reasoning up again. As you go through the ladder, use some guiding questions at each step:
Actions: Why do I believe this to be the right action? What are some alternative options?
Beliefs: What beliefs do I hold about this? What conclusions are they based on?
Conclusions: Why did I conclude this? What are my assumptions there?
Assumptions: Are my assumptions valid? Why am I assuming this?
Interpretations: Am I looking at this data objectively? What other meanings could they have?
Selected data: What did I ignore or didn't pay attention to? Are there other sources of data I didn't consider?
As you answer these, you may find that your reasoning changes along the way and that's good. When you reach the bottom of the ladder, work your way back up again, this time more consciously and deliberately.
While researching confirmation bias, I came across the work of Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, both cognitive scientists. In his TED talk “How and why we reason”, Hugo presents their Argumentative Theory of Reasoning.
This theory says that we have evolved reasoning capabilities in order to convince others because it was advantageous for our survival. The key insight is that while reasoning can help us find objective truth, it’s not its primary function. We’re designed to convince others that we’re right, not to be actually right.
And if your goal is to persuade others, it’s of course helpful to be able to find arguments supporting your view more easily. This means that confirmation bias isn’t a flaw in reasoning, it’s a feature.
Thankfully, we also have the ability to evaluate arguments of other and change our minds. But understanding where the confirmation bias comes from can help us be more intentional about when we actually want to find truth versus when we just want to persuade others.
Coming next
In the upcoming newsletter, we’ll look at sharpening your communication by using a 'BLUF' approach (getting to the point faster) and the Minto pyramid framework.
Wow! That was something! We have lost the art of listening objectively!