Confirmation Bias

Some time ago I asked the question whether the proliferation of news sources (cable, internet, alternative networks) leads to polarization. Check out the post called Cable News from Jonah Lehrer's excellent blog The Frontal Cortex (author of How We Decide; the connection is at the bottom of this page). The answer seems to be yes. Also check out his post on chess intuition. Experts often are guided by their intuitions.

Below is a post from an interesting article on jury selection. Consider this piece of advice.

"Jurors decide cases based on their guts, then look for intellectual reasons to support their emotional decisions. As a result of confirmation bias they might not see, might disregard, or might discount all facts that don't support their (gut) preconceptions.

If you want a really hard job, try to win your case beginning with the presentation of evidence. It's not always impossible, but it's not nearly as easy as using the evidence to confirm what your jurors already believe.

Can you talk with (or to) the jury about ideas and things, and trigger a discussion of their emotions? Not likely. Can you talk with them about ideas and things, and influence their emotions? Sure, but it's an unnecessarily roundabout approach.

Here are some possible ways of finding out jurors' views on one of the issues in your case:

•Bad jury selection question: "[Proposition you'd like your jurors to accept.] Who disagrees?" (Followed, for the lawyerly coup de grace, by "I take it by your silence that you agree.")

•Better jury selection question: "What do you think about [issue]?"

•Even better jury selection question: "How do you feel about [issue]?"

If you want to know what people's guts say, you can't ask them what their brains say."

It seems that sometimes humans are better guided by intuition...when we are experts (or situations where we have to choose quickly). But most us of seem to follow intuition most of the time, even where we have little expertise.