What Is Confirmation Bias and Does it Affect Christians?

Let’s say that you are a Republican. And you hear on the news that a member of your party has been accused by a Democratic leader of engaging in scandalous activity. What thoughts go through your mind?

If you are anything like most people, when a preferred politician is accused of a scandal, you look for evidence of his/her innocence. And when a disliked politician is accused of a scandal, it doesn’t take much evidence for you to declare them guilty. Why is this? What is going on?

What I’ve just described to you is something known as confirmation bias. It impacts all of humanity. Yes, even followers of Jesus. It’s also dangerous, but it does not have to be definitive in our lives.

What Is Confirmation Bias?

This is how Britannica defines confirmation bias:

The tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision-making is largely unintentional and often results in ignoring inconsistent information. Existing beliefs can include one’s expectations in a given situation and predictions about a particular outcome. People are especially likely to process information to support their own beliefs when the issue is highly important or self-relevant.

What does it look like in practice? I’ll give you an example.

In 1983, George Brett, the Hall of Fame hitter for the Kansas City Royals, hit a game-winning two-run home run against the New York Yankees. But the Royals ended up losing the game because the umpire ruled that Brett had too much pine tar on his bat. He cheated.

Or that’s what the umpires, who were obviously Yankees fans, would have you believe. As a Kansas City Royals fan, I think it was a bad call. (Okay, this actually occurred two days before my second birthday. I wasn’t technically a Royals fan at the time. But having looked at all the evidence [not really], I assure you the Royals were cheated.) The Royals should have won the game.

In January 2015, the New England Patriots illegally deflated footballs to give them a competitive advantage over their opponents. My suspicion is that they were doing this all season, and it’s probably why they won so many Super Bowls.

Can you guess that I am a Royals fan and not a Patriots fan? My bias causes me to examine the evidence in favor of George Brett, and I am biased against the New England Patriots. It’s innocuous when it comes to things like sports, but what happens when confirmation bias impacts larger things?

Why Do We Have Confirmation Bias?

Where does confirmation bias come from? If you ask someone who answers this from an evolutionary perspective, they will say that it was advantageous for our primal ancestors to reject new information. New information has the possibility of disrupting the stability of a social group. And we are wired biologically to conform to our own tribe.

Studies have shown that the brain releases oxytocin (the pleasure chemical) into our brains when we do that, which is met with group approval. We are rewarded for conforming. But it also rewards us when we reject the “other.” All that to say, we are biologically wired with a confirmation bias. In their book, Truth Over Tribe, Keith Simon, and Patrick Miller summarize it well:

“All of this explains why it’s so easy to trust someone in your tribe and doubt someone outside of it. You have a biological predisposition. It also explains why breaking with your tribe’s perspective can be incredibly painful. It sets off your internal, tribal alert system: If I do this, I risk exclusion from the group. If I do this, I risk their disdain. If I do this, I might go hungry and die alone.” 

While I would ultimately reject some of the conclusions and predispositions of evolutionary psychology, this is not entirely without merit—even from a Christian worldview. It would not take a rejection of the biblical narrative to embrace this concept.

It is entirely plausible that God wired our bodies and brains with chemicals, like oxytocin, to assist us in enriching the community. He wired us to work and keep the garden. But what happens when humanity rebels against God and our bodies and the world around us are thrown into chaos? We’ve also switched tribes. Now, these pleasure chemicals will commune with our flesh to cause us to make bad choices—like rejecting God.

Confirmation bias develops within a sin-marred world.

Why Is it Dangerous?

There are many ways in which confirmation bias can be deadly.

For one, it can be deadly to our faith. It is a form of confirmation bias that keeps all of us from believing in Christ. This is part of what Paul is talking about in Romans 1 when he speaks of humanity “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.” It is also what is taking place with the religious leaders in John 5, when Jesus says, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”

Had his opponents truly been “searching the Scriptures” and had they actually listened to the witness of John the Baptist, they would have responded to Jesus favorably. But he did not fit their preconceived ideas of what a Messiah was supposed to be. He did not fit the mold. And so, rather than looking for reasons why Jesus was the Messiah—they became stuck on reasons why He couldn’t be.

Confirmation bias keeps us from the truth. It can keep us from the truth about Jesus, and it also can keep us from the truth in other situations. And it can cause us to live a life that is not honoring to Christ because it is not a life built upon truth.

If Jesus is correct (and I believe He is), then the truth will set us free. All truth. Are you a person of truth? Or are you one who lives truth-adjacent? Confirmation bias will often keep you hovering around the truth but will keep you from fully embracing that which is true.

How Can You Move Away from Bias and Into Truth?

The first step in overcoming confirmation bias is to acknowledge its reality in your life. We all have confirmation bias. And thus, we need to heed Proverbs 18:17. “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” We do well to pursue the other side of each argument. We need to be able to represent any opposing argument well.

Secondly, it is helpful to ask ourselves searching questions about the truth we’ve embraced. Why do I believe this? What evidence would change my mind? Why might the other person view things as they do? What might be keeping me from believing the opposing side?

The gospel frees us to ask these hard questions. The good news of Jesus is not afraid to be under a microscope. In fact, Christianity is the most falsifiable religion. And that is a good thing. Christians should not shy away from evidence. And if the gospel is true (which I believe it is), then we have nothing to fear by pursuing truth wherever it leads us.

Not only does the gospel free us to pursue truth it also is shaping a new community of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. And being around other people with different perspectives and different cultural history helps us with our own confirmation bias. We should seek out these different perspectives and celebrate the diversity which God has created.

Sources:
Patrick Miller and Keith Simon, Truth Over Tribe (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2022), 86

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