According to the dictionary, the word bias simply means a preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment. For example, you might have a favorable impression of the teaching profession because your mother and wife are both in that field.  Or, you might asked to be excused from participating as a juror given your bias against cops following a bad experience you had with a security guard at your school. Confirmation bias, moreover, is the tendency to search for, favor, interpret, and remember information in such a way as to confirm one's preexisting hypotheses or beliefs, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities. The perfect example? Politics. Democratic voters tend to get their information from liberal-leaning networks like CNN and MSNBC while Republicans opt for conservative channels like Fox News.  Indeed, we trust and recall information that fits in with our existing world view while discounting information...

As Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once warned, "Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner." Indeed, some people care so deeply about others' opinions of them that they allow those individuals to dictate the very decisions they make in their own lives -- whether it affects their love life, career, and so forth. For example, some people will not date a person unless they get the green light from their friends. Others will refrain from dressing a certain way, driving a specific car, or eating particular foods for fear that relatives will not approve. Worrying over what people say or think about you will only trap you mentally and emotionally, preventing you from reaching your full potential and living life to the fullest. And here's the truth: In most cases, these people aren't thinking of us at all! And even if they are, who's to say it isn't something positive? Perhaps they dig your new glasses even though you're c...

I recently read an article in the magazine Psychology Today  that discusses a phenomenon in social perception called the Doppelgänger Bias .  For starters, a doppelgänger is a non-biologically related look-alike or double of a living person. In books and movies, it is sometimes portrayed as a ghostly or paranormal apparition and usually deemed a harbinger of bad luck. Our prior knowledge of a person -- whether he/she has treated you well or poorly -- determines how you act toward that individual in the future. But research suggests that a person's track record may also affect how you treat people who look like the person in question. In studies headed by Brown University neuroscientist Oriel FeldmanHall, participants played a money-sharing game with several "male partners" whose headshots appeared onscreen. (Players were lead to believe they were dealing with actual people, but the partners were virtual.) As the study participants played, they discovered these ...