The Bitter Truth About Confirmation Bias

A couple of months ago, I was in Nebraska City at an art opening, in tandem with working on a new book. One of the guests had brought a box of hand-foraged fruit. I recognized the light green and the potato-like shape: pawpaws, which are found growing wild in the DC area (look for fruiting trees along the C&O Canal towpath). I’d never seen them outside my home region and, as it turns out, Nebraska is the absolute western edge of where they grow. 

Pawpaw trees are a terrific native flora to have around. The larvae of Zebra Swallowtail butterflies feed on their leaves; the usually voracious deer do not, finding them bitter. The fruit is known for its creamy yellow texture (the name pawpaw is sometimes attributed to Portuguese explorers who, upon arriving in America, compared the fruit to a papaya). But the fruit are lumpen, funny-looking things with a stack of bloated brown seeds inside. 

Our forager friend was passing his pawpaws around with pride and, with knife and plate, offering a taste. I watched as two people tried it. Here’s what they asked in advance:

Person 1: “How do you know when they’re ripe?”

Person 2: “Are the seeds poisonous?” (The answer: they are, mildly. Don’t swallow them.)

So, spoiler alert: Person 1 tried a slice, then another, commented that the fruit was perfectly ripe, and asked if they could have an uncut one to take home. 

Person 2 tried a slice, gave a polite smile, and walked away rapidly. 

Setting aside matters of personal taste, I was witnessing a classic case of confirmation bias at work. One person asked an open-ended question based in curiosity. The other person asked a binary question based in fear. Each processed the incoming “data” and reacted accordingly. 

MIRROR MIRROR

On a basic level, confirmation bias—a term coined by cognitive psychologist Peter Wason while he was at University of College, London—describes our tendency to seek, interpret, and recall information in a manner that favors preexisting beliefs or values. Sometimes this results in “attitude polarization,” where two opposite takeaways occur despite having started from the same place of exposure to story or experience. Sometimes a person creates an “illusory correspondence,” a false perception of connection between two events. 

Born in 1924 (died in 2003), Wason has an interesting personal history that included entering academics after his service in World War II, having struggled in his individual early education by failing countless standardized school exams. He wanted to challenge the perception that people were inherently rational and logical, the prevailing position held at the time, and he drew on the work of philosopher Karl Popper and psychologist Jean Piaget. In 1968, Wason wrote, “dogmatic thinking and the refusal to entertain the possibility of alternatives can easily result in error.” His Guardian obituary framed him as both a chess lover and a kin to Sherlock Holmes. 

Confirmation bias is related to the status quo bias. The good news is that we do periodically overcome status quo bias and convince ourselves to try new things. The problem is that we sometimes test out those new things or approaches in an (unintentionally) sneaky way, so they are destined to fail in our evaluations unless we actively work to the contrary.   

FRESH FLAVOR, FUNKY LOOK

Vegetable and fruit consumption is at a critical low worldwide, resulting in diet- and health-related issues. How can we distribute fruits and vegetables and, just as importantly, make sure they are eaten? In consideration of addressing this issue, in a 2021 issue of Appetite, scientists investigated the phenomenon of neophobia—in which subjects reject food on sight if it is not previously familiar. 

Four test fruits were independently evaluated in terms of visual inspiration to appetite. Pomelo and rose apple (which share a palette of reds, pinks, and light greens, and plump flesh) were judged likely to be tasty. Based on looks alone, black sapote and noni fruit (whose palette shares the same light green but veers into brown and black, with sometimes stringy flesh) were judged un-tasty. These visual descriptions had no direct relation to the values of sweet, sour, and other tastes, nor to the digestion experience. 

Still: the willingness to try novel flavors, in a different set of test subjects, proved proportionate to the previous group’s perception of what was appetizing. Subjects were willing to take a chance on a pomelo or rose apple and unwilling to try the noni or saponi fruits. The requested information veered positive for the fruits deemed “tasty” looking, e.g., “How much do you want to know if most people enjoy eating the food?” In contrast, and using the same bank of questions, negative information was requested of the “nasty”-looking fruits, e.g., “How much do you want to know if most people dislike the texture of the food?” 

You didn’t come to this blog post needing to be told that looks matter too much when it comes to fruit. Anyone who has paid extra for a perfect, unblemished grocery-store apple—versus a more tasty, spotted, insect-pitted farmer’s market option—understands that paradox in behavior. What matters, for our purposes, is moving this analogy over to rolling out a new product or messaging plan to your sales team. 

Is your proposal rosy-fleshed, or brown-tinged? Plump, or stringy? If people find it appetizing, they’ll ponder how successful it can be. If they don’t find it appetizing, they’ll spend their time anticipating how much prospects will dislike it. Either way, they’ll focus on feedback in line with their expectations, and forget what doesn’t “fit.” Make sure to dislodge these attitudes and reset everyone to a baseline where they gather honest opinions, in honest terms. 

ACROSS THE BOARD

Confirmation bias manifests into our working knowledge of the world in several ways. If you’re receiving feedback on a new experience (as in the previous example), one issue is the “irrational primacy effect,” in which we disproportionately prize information received early on. Another key issue is “belief perseverance,” when we hold onto something believed to be true, even if new information shows it to be false. We do so even at the cost of our own profit. 

In a recent study published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, scientists looked at the impact of 20 years of female jockeying in the UK related to fixed-price betting odds—cross-referencing in rates of performance. Female jockeys, as it turns out, are perpetually underestimated in the UK betting market, particularly in the field of National Hunt or “jump” racing, which is perceived to be especially physically taxing, despite a rising rate of wins by women and good publicity coverage of those wins. In 2022, given a slightly diminishing field (meaning, fewer overall competitors) the male win rate had increased by 1.8%—and the female win rate had increased by 4.7%. 

“It is feasible,” the authors acknowledge, “that bettors may have failed to recognise this growing professionalisation of females.”

How does this translate to your sales organization? Ask yourself whether you’ve gotten in the habit of thinking of women (or any marginalized identity) as being “good” at certain types of skills—and remember, even if they’re good at all those things, they can be good in other capacities as well. Don’t rely on casual in-house dynamics to evaluate your team; make surveys, based in part on self-report and in part on outside perception, that capture performance in a fuller context. Place your bets accordingly.  

In recent years, some scientists have questioned whether confirmation bias is a lasting neurological phenomenon or a socially conditioned issue. For now, what we know is that it has a persuasive and persistent impact on decisions made in the real world. If that proves changeable, I’ll be happy to toast that with you twenty years from now—over a meal of pawpaws. 

Need to overcome confirmation bias and change up your sales strategy? Reach out at mastery@maestrogroup.co for more information on training, coaching, assessments, and more.