The Confirmation Bias

When we get caught in a confirmation bias, our minds natural tendency to seek out information that supports what we already believe. And I had an odd experience with this when I was giving a presentation in Germany at the end of the talk. A participant approached me and said, wow, I can really tell that you've been influenced by living in Japan. So somehow your actions confirmed some pre-existing image, I guess, people had about Asians having some spiritual or mystical quality about them. Well, and this is a rather harmless example, but sometimes the confirmation bias reinforces negative stereotypes. This gives birth to prejudice.