From Confirmation Bias to A New, Higher Possibility | Kimberly Crowe | TEDxTenayaPaseo

[Music] when i was five years old my best friend in the world explained to me that the chocolate cereal at her house was good for us that's right it contained all the vitamins and minerals we would ever need to grow up big and strong wait what seriously i never knew that and after tasting it i was positive she must be right but as i learned a little bit more about nutrition and product labels new information started creeping in and my perspective started to shift and even though i really wanted her to be right i realized

we were wrong a few years after the serial incident i overheard some adults talking at a family gathering they were talking about a friend of theirs who had accidentally gotten pregnant later in life wait what accidentally gotten pregnant no see i was eight and i knew how babies were made and i was pretty sure nobody could do that by accident i went home and talked to my mom about it and i was pretty sure she would say i was right and they were wrong you can imagine my surprise when i learned from her that honey

sometimes people who love each other do that because it feels good it's even called making love oh i was eight and that no boys were gross and the process of making babies was disgusting well since then i've incorporated some new information and my perspective on that has also shifted significantly dare i say i was wrong now the process of incorporating new information and shifting beliefs it's a natural part of learning and we do it very easily when we're young because we come from a beginner's mind where it's okay to be wrong we're supposed to be

learning things being wrong is even cute sometimes but as we get older we want to be more and more right about stuff being right becomes very very important and this is where the problems begin you see our perspective forms our world view a lens through which we see things and when we're young our world view is a little flexible because we're always incorporating new information but as we get older our perspective shifting sort starts to stall or even halt completely and we human beings well meaning we start pouring cement around it and the new information

as it goes by is harder to get in but if it agrees with our world perspective it's welcome but if it doesn't then it sort of hits that cement wall if you will when does this start happening and why confirmation bias it's a term that was coined in 1970 by english psychologist peter wassen he found that people had a tendency to prefer information that confirmed or supported their existing beliefs and they paid more attention to it and they overlooked or ignored that information which did not meet their existing beliefs in fact a stanford did a

study on this and they found that when participants were given false information and then information that clearly showed that the information was false that participants still clung to that initial information the study concluded saying that once established beliefs are remarkably resilient in the face of empirical challenge they were very hard to overturn interesting so yeah there's a sweet seductive pull of being right i've fallen into it many times but if we're actually ignoring information that's factually correct just because it doesn't meet our current world view and we're pretending it's not real then we're sort of

living in a bit of a fantasy land a fairy tale if you will so i'd like to take you on a little journey and this journey begins with a fairy tale perhaps you know it once upon a time there was a little mermaid who lived in a castle under the sea she had a beautiful singing voice she was happy but restless she was ready to see something new so one day she ventures to the surface and she's sitting on a rock happily singing when along comes a boat with a handsome prince the prince is captivated

by her beautiful voice but wouldn't you know it before they can meet a storm comes up and rages and knocks the prince unconscious and overboard the mermaid rushes in and rescues him and lays him gently on the beach she is smitten he's a handsome prince after all so she makes a deal to become human so she can live with him forever all she has to do is give up her view beautiful voice she does the two fall in love and live happily ever after lovely right a happy hopeful tale about sacrificing in the name of

true love but let's continue our journey and see if we can look at this same tale from another perspective once upon a time there was a little mermaid lived in a castle under the sea yada yada singing surface boat prince storm got it mermaid rescues him lays him gently on the beach good so far right but then what happens she gets it into her head that she's in love with him and makes a deal to become human with a witch all she has to do is give up her friends her family her royal crown and

get this her voice she agrees to all of these terms without negotiation because she believes she must be in love with the prince and be with him forever the prince she just met a few hours ago oh wait technically they haven't even met because he was unconscious and all right no matter the deal is done and she's turned human and deposited on the beach the prince finds her naked on the beach and falls for her immediately he assumes that she's also been a victim of a shipwreck as he has but with no voice the mermaid

cannot explain to him that she is no victim she's actually the hero that rescued him when he was drowning and now she's the one who gave up everything to be with him in the hopes that he would also kind of like to be with her forever that said now the princess has no voice to answer him and so she can only agree in a series of pathetic smiley doe-eyed nods really really and now they can live happily ever after with a relationship that's based on a serious lack of information and some really misguided beliefs i

don't think so now that i could see from this perspective i saw the little mermaid for what it was a dangerous slippery slope fairy tale with some deeply misguided beliefs seated underneath no no it was wrong i was positive and i took great joy in pointing this out to everyone else who would listen can't you see how they're treating this entire tale can't you see what they're trying to teach our children that it's good to give up your voice that it's perfectly fine to give up who you are for someone else that it's totally fine

to neglect your duties and responsibilities to your community and ignore leadership that it's perfectly fine to do this without even negotiating and signing off on contracts without reading the fine print absolutely not i was now on a mission to reveal the truth of the little mermaid until one day when my very own fairy godparents in the form of three good friends and a bottle of wine came to me and said oh kimberly don't you realize you need to stop hating on the little mermaid you need to show her some love some compassion don't you realize

she just made mistakes she was doing the best she could with what she had at the time many of us have made the same mistakes she has even you wait what no no no no no no no no i would never make the same choices she made never never so you can tell this is going to end badly for me right so never say never especially not when you're with your three fairy godparents in a bottle of wine it was a heated discussion for sure that evening i didn't want to be wrong i loved being

right about the little mermaid but as the night wore on i took a long hard compassionate loving look back at my own life and i saw that there were times that i had given up who i really was for someone else there were times that i'd failed to be there for people who needed me there were times that i had achieved heroic deeds only to downplay them later and there were times that i'd given up my voice but now that i could see that i could decide to make different choices now that i could see

it from this perspective i could be better next time i could do things differently and i liked that i had shifted with a little help from my friends so if you've come along on this journey with me today maybe you've felt something shift for you as well if you have it was actually two things shifting one is your willingness to incorporate new information and the second is your willingness to break through that concrete and shift your belief a little bit about what the new information meant now shifting beliefs is hard it's scary and depending on

how long you've held those beliefs it can even feel terrifying and our fight or flight can kick in that is exactly what i was doing with my fairy godparents that night i was pushing away the information i was running from it why because i was scared i was scared i was wrong i was scared i was wrong about the little mermaid sure but i was scared that i was wrong about me about how i was showing up in the world and once i shifted i realized that i could do something about it and i felt

a lot better in fact it felt not scary at all but like a weight had been lifted it felt like i was stepping out of some weird sticky fairy tale i told for myself and back into my real life now remember that stanford study that showed that people ignore information when it doesn't fit their world view well harvard did a similar study and they found very similarly that 76 of people clung to the rightness of their belief even when presented with concrete facts to the contrary but they found something else very hopeful as well they

saw that in that narrow margin of 24 of people who did shift their belief that they were six times more likely to achieve their end goal so yes shifting your beliefs is hard scary terrifying difficult but when we do lovely things can happen so in fairy tales right and wrong is often portrayed as good and evil or black and white but ladies and gentlemen real life is not a fairy tale it's a journey and it's a journey of beautiful new perspectives it's not about something silly and simplistic like being right or wrong so here we

are you and me in real life and i encourage you i invite you to set down that sticky compelling need to be right and instead walk into a new world a world where it's okay to be wrong where it's okay to think from a beginner's mind it's okay to believe that we all have very godparent best friends who are willing to help us along this journey when we get stuck a world where making love is about way more than making babies and a world where that delicious chocolate cereal well maybe not nutritious can feed us

in a lot of different ways so i'll leave you with this i believe that if we're able to set down the fairy tale of being right and we're able to shake off some of that cement and shift our perspective and we're able to allow all the information in whether it agrees with us or not that we can enjoy this glorious delicious journey called real life and we can do it happily ever after you