Confirmation bias

There is a special satisfaction when you slay a dragon. It gives a warm feeling in the center of your chest and a lightness in the pit of your stomach. A pleasant tightness at the edge of your eyes, perhaps it is simply a slight smile, emerges. There is a general tingle and glow that is enormously satisfying. Have I slain a dragon lately? Not in the flesh, but the kind of dragon to which I’m referring is the metaphorical kind, they are not in short supply.
This morning in the NYT Digest, a column by Ross Douthat was published entitled The Partisan Mind – The body scanner debate would have played out very differently if it had occurred during the Bush Administration. Douthat is one of two slightly right of center columnists that the Times employes.
His arguments are interesting - depending on what you believe before you read the column! But of greater interest are the comments that are posted by the readers. One was up so quickly that I wonder if the writer had access to the column before it was published. I recommend the article, but I find the comments to be more interesting.
There is a psychological concept called Confirmation Bias. In essence, it says that when our minds are made up, we tend to reject ideas that are counter to our belief and to accept confirmatory information. There has been some interesting research lately that not only confirms this idea, but provides a physiological basis for it. When we dismiss information that goes against our beliefs, we are reinforced by the release of endorphins into the pleasure centers of our brains. Recall my opening paragraph – that’s all the result of endorphins, and the dragon is a position that is different from our own.
Ref: Michael Scherner, Scientific American ?