Aug 07 2009
Dopamine and the Confirmation Bias
My bad. I may have gotten something wrong. Fortunately, it wasn’t a fact but a conjecture. A mistaken conjecture is still worth noting, I think.
In a previous post I speculated about why the confirmation bias is such a pervasive problem in human thought and belief. Briefly put, it consist of the tendency to notice events and information that confirm your belief coupled with the failure to acknowledge events and information that could challenge and disconfirm your belief.
In How Bogus Beliefs Persist (I): Blondes Have More Fun I used a “net” analogy to describe belief and the apprehension of information.
If a belief consists of a neural network, an analogy can be drawn between beliefs and butterfly nets. When holding a belief-net, we are capable of catching those flitting bits of data that fit the net. But here’s the rub: How are we to catch relevant bits of data that don’t fit?
But the real issue my have more to do with cellular dynamics.
In “Why We Learn More From Our Successes Than Our Failures” at ScienceDaily a study into cellular changes involved in learning was described. (Remembering something — when it goes into memory –is learning.)
“We have shown that brain cells keep track of whether recent behaviors were successful or not,” Miller said. Furthermore, when a behavior was successful, cells became more finely tuned to what the animal was learning. After a failure, there was little or no change in the brain — nor was there any improvement in behavior.
And here’s come another speculation. I think dopamine may be involved. Perhaps a “hit” will generate in us more of a dopamine release than does a “miss.” Thus beliefs are easier to confirm than the accumulate the evidence needed to overthrow them. (Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in alertness and the experience of reward/pleasure. Addictive behaviors increase dopamine levels, temporarily). And so the confirming items stick with us more. Perhaps.
Maybe we need to drink more coffee when exposing ourselves to potentially disconfirming evidence.
