tadaaa
Senior Member
"confirmation bias"
what is interesting is that everyone falls victim to this - it is how you deal with it that is important
just recently in another forum I post on, someone posted a link to a photo that showed a female Journalist (she was involved a in a current UK news story)
underneath the link the poster said, "doesn't she look like the actress that starred in that comedy with Hugh Grant"
ah "four weddings and funeral" I thought as I clicked the link - and sure enough (to my mind) she looked like Andie MacDowell
I posted as such and the poster agreed too (lol)
further on in the thread someone pointed out that the film the poster was actually thinking about was probably Bridget Jones and the journalist looked like Renee Zellweger - which indeed on a revisit she did
I had fallen victim to "confirmation bias" and admitted as much, I had Andie Macdowell in my head when I clicked on the original link and that is the likeness my brain registered
when in fact the journalist did look much more like Renee Zellweger
a simple and trivial example but nevertheless, as David Shermer points out, the trick is to
"keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out"