Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs. It is strongest for emotionally charged topics and is displayed when people gather or remember information selectively or interpret it in a biased way.
For example, if the news is, “The President took another vacation today,” a person with confirmation bias will look at it in one of two ways.
- If he
likes the President, he’ll say
something like, “Great! Being President is a tough job and this vacation
will help to rejuvenate him to he can do the job better!”
- If he doesn’t like the President, he’ll say something like, “Can you believe he’s taking another vacation with taxpayer money?! He should spend more time working to fix <<INSERT PROBLEM HERE>>.”
One of the dangers of confirmation bias is that people stop looking for information on the topic once they find something that backs up what they believe. This is one of the reasons the myth of overnight success has flourished. We want to believe overnight success is possible, so when we hear something that sounds remotely similar to it, we don’t ask further questions and, instead, fill in the blanks ourselves.
In the music business, there is always more to the story. The reality of hard work and long hours isn’t nearly as exciting as the story of a musician who was singing on a street corner and just happened to be discovered by a record label guy who was walking by.
We are in the business of fantasy. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt and always look deeper to find out what's really going on.
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