You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

by David McRaney

For example, you tend to look for information that confirms your beliefs and ignore information that challenges them.

Confirmation Bias THE MISCONCEPTION: Your opinions are the result of years of rational, objective analysis. THE TRUTH: Your opinions are the result of years of paying attention to information that confirmed what you believed, while ignoring information that challenged your preconceived notions.

Be careful. People like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things . . . well, new things aren’t what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don’t want to know that man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds . . . Not news but olds, telling people that what they think they already know is true.

Krebs has researched purchasing trends on Amazon and the clustering habits of people on social networks for years, and his research shows what psychological research into confirmation bias predicts: you want to be right about how you see the world, so you seek out information that confirms your beliefs and avoid contradictory evidence and opinions.

Over time, by never seeking the antithetical, through accumulating subscriptions to magazines, stacks of books, and hours of television, you can become so confident in your worldview that no one can dissuade you.

Knowing hindsight bias exists should arm you with healthy skepticism when politicians and businessmen talk about their past decisions. Also, keep it in mind the next time you get into a debate online or an argument with a boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife—the other person really does think he or she was never wrong, and so do you.

Anywhere people are searching for meaning, you will see the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. For many, the world loses luster when you accept the idea that random mutations can lead to eyeballs or random burn patterns on toast can look like a person’s face.

There is a 100 percent chance something will be there, be anywhere, when you look; only the need for meaning changes how you feel about what you see.

Believing you understand your motivations and desires, your likes and dislikes, is called the introspection illusion.

More often than not, apophenia is the result of the most dependable of all delusions—the confirmation bias. You see what you want to see and ignore the rest. When what you want to see is something meaningful, you ignore all the things in the story of your life that are meaningless.

Usually, these arguments are between men, because men will defend their ego no matter how slight the insult.

taste. When you see the opinions of some people as better than others on the merit of their status or training alone, you are arguing from authority.

These things aren’t more likely just because you can’t prove they don’t exist.

The research shows that groups of friends who allow members to disagree and still be friends are more likely to come to better decisions. So the next time you are in a group of people trying to reach consensus, be the asshole. Every group needs one, and it might as well be you.