A Psychological aspect of NEWS

- Pratik Badgujar                                                                                                                    4 minute read 

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NEWS- its something we are surrounded of. Boring, funny, astonishing and exciting; news comes in all flavours! Formally defined by Merriam Webster as ‘a report of recent events’, news is an important source of knowing the recent developments all around the world.  Many times, those developments are a key input for lot of decision making for almost all of us. A significant part of daily conversations is about news. Gossip, after all, is nothing without sharing of surprising news about a third person!

A thought Experiment

Consider that you are a rich fellow and you like to live on an island alone in your own solitude- far away from other humans. Also, you do not like to communicate with others by any means. Now, to keep abreast of happenings of the world, you have two independent sources of information amongst many others. These two sources bring everyday news to you in written format daily. One day you find that your sources gave news with two contradictory viewpoints. View X says one thing and view Y says completely another. If the information is irrelevant to you may decide to ignore it completely. But, if you have to take a decision based on the truth, ignoring isn’t an option. Which one would you trust?

Perhaps you will say that I will try to check with other potential sources and see which variant of the news they subscribe to. Now, let’s say there are 10 sources and half of them support view X and the other half view Y. Then what would be your choice? In such a scenario almost of us will believe that view which is in line with our existing worldview of things. This is what psychologists call confirmation bias.

Confirmation Bias:

Confirmation bias is the tendency of a person to believe in the news which conforms with his already existing beliefs. For example, in the above example if the news X confirms his views then he will tend to believe it immediately without verifying. On the other hand, the news Y if does not supports his beliefs he will doubt it, even if originally it was the true one. In some cases, people even try to prove that the news X is correct.

Even if let’s say, out of 10, two are in line with your view and eight not, still people generally tend to trust those two views and ignore the other. Basically, under the impact of confirmation bias, a person doesn’t even try to look for evidence in order to decide the authenticity of some information.

Political parties, marketing companies know very well how to use confirmation bias for spreading their views among masses. They deliberately put inaccurate or misleading news in circulation so that people who trust that news blindly will immediately be influenced.

We all agree that gone are the days when we could easily choose our source of news and trust it blindly. During independence movement, print media, which was the only mass media existing there was the most trusted source of news and events happening around the world. I am not sure if there still exists a source which is truly unbiased and doesn’t support a particular ideology covertly.

This bias is used by political parties, PR teams of celebrities, mischievous companies etc. Here are some examples of how people fall prey due to their confirmation biases:

• If you believe miracles happen, you will easily believe any charlatan performing some shady tricks in front for you.
• If you believe the world is against you/ your community/religion, you will easily find its evidence as your brain will selectively focus on news conforming to your beliefs.
• If you believe that governments are hiding aliens’ existence, any unexplained phenomenon (like vanishing of flight MH 370) in news will strengthen your belief.
• Politicians make baseless and/or controversial statements just to pacify the confirmation bias of a section of voters so as to keep getting their support.

Examples are endless. Any person unaware of confirmation bias is vulnerable to its misuse by others.

You must have definitely come across various social media posts which you were able to identify its falseness immediately due to better understanding about the news. However, this is not the case always. In absence of complete information or deep understanding, we all are vulnerable to decision error due to confirmation bias.

Solution:

Here are a few ways to avoid confirmation bias error: First of all, one must know about existence of bias so that he/she can keep a vigil on him/herself. Secondly, it is always recommended to gather information about the same news from multiple sources. I know, I know, not everybody has that much time or patience, but to avoid confirmation bias, this is one very important tool. Third- don’t jump the gun i.e., never make your mind immediately after reading a news or getting the information.

I hope you find this article helpful and that you will remember how news can seriously mess up with your mind! Have a great time watching news !!

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Personally, I am a news guzzler and can’t pass a day without checking on latest happenings! Have you ever come across a news which you trusted and it later turned to be a fake one? Comment below and let us know. You can also mail your grand applause or abuses (!) about the article on simplewords48@gmail.com )