The media report this week that the British government has announced that school children will be taught about confirmation bias as they learn how to evaluate information online.
With this new programme the next generation might learn to identify the tendency to look at new information as a confirmation of what you already believe. This will help them recognise ‘fake news’ and distinguish between misinformation and disinformation.
“We may be able to spot the bias in the news or on social media, but it’s really unusual that people can see their own bias,” says Vanja Sandelin-Blair. “Our children will soon be aware of it, so we’d better be, too!”
In the future it will be, if it isn’t already, a life skill to be able to constructively challenge, question and scrutinise information. The key here is to learn more about biases.
The more we learn about how they work, the more we will be aware how they might influence our judgements and the more we can learn how to challenge them. If you want to make good judgements, be it whether to ‘like’ or ‘share’ a piece of information online, or a business decision, you need to learn more about your own biases.
Contact Vanja Sandelin-Blair to get insight into good judgements.
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