Perspective on our biases

The official saying is innocent until proven guilty. Do we always believe that? Does that apply to everyone? It always seems when a celebrity or high profile individual is in the media because of their legal issues, we tend to come to our own conclusions as to that person's guilt or innocence rather quickly. From O.J. Simpson to Mike Tyson to Bill Clinton to Eliot Spitzer to Bernie Madoff to Bill Cosby and so on. Whether or not these people have been found guilty or not guilt is not the thesis of this writing. I wish to bring attention to our thought process. How much information do you need before you come to this conclusion? How much does how we feel about a person determine how we process information to come to a conclusion about what we believe to be that person's guilt or innocence?

Many decisions we make involve something psychologists refer to as a confirmation bias. We subconsciously search out information that confirms the positions we hold to validate those positions while neglecting information that contradicts our position. This isn't restricted to whether we believe in someone's guilt or innocence, this applies to almost any decision we make. We don't like to feel like we're wrong or that we've made a mistake. This bias makes it hard to be objective and can easily enable us to make uninformed decisions. This can lead to a fast snowball where we keep rationalizing our biases to cover up previous biases until inertia has it moving in a direction which is very difficult to stop. Think George Bush and his insistence on Iraq having WMD's.

Confirmation biases can be managed if first we become mindful of them then work to manage them.