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Bill and Megan discuss Confirmation Bias. They talk about what confirmation bias is and how it can fool us, confirmation bias in today’s sociaty, how it’s used in court cases, and how to avoid getting fooled by it.
Hosted by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. and Megan Hunter, MBA, It’s All Your Fault! High Conflict People explores the five types of people who can ruin your life—people with high conflict personalities and how they weave themselves into our lives in romance, at work, next door, at school, places of worship, and just about everywhere, causing chaos, exhaustion, and dread for everyone else.
They are the most difficult of difficult people — some would say they’re toxic. Without them, tv shows, movies, and the news would be boring, but who wants to live that way in your own life!
Have you ever wanted to know what drives them to act this way?
In the It’s All Your Fault podcast, we’ll take you behind the scenes to understand what’s happening in the brain and illuminates why we pick HCPs as life partners, why we hire them, and how we can handle interactions and relationships with them. We break down everything you ever wanted to know about people with the 5 high conflict personality types: narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, antisocial/sociopath, and paranoid.
And we’ll give you tips on how to spot them and how to deal with them.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions and relationships those considered high conflict. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host Bill Eddie.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hi everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. We focus on training, consulting, and educational programs and methods all to do with high conflict. In this episode, we're discussing how to avoid being fooled by high conflict people and the association with confirmation bias. First, a couple of notes. If you have a question about a high conflict situation, send it to podcast high conflict institute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast, where you'll also find all the show notes and links. Please give us a read of review and tell your friends, colleagues, or family about us, especially if they're dealing with a high conflict situation. We're very grateful. So this is our first episode of 2023, so happy new Year, bill. Happy New Year everyone.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Thank you Megan, and happy New year to you.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Oh, thank you. It's, uh, 2022 was a fantastic year, and this podcast really just kind of blew up, meaning, uh, in a good way. ,
Speaker 2 (01:32):
We should, we should add 2022 was a fantastic year for us because of the podcast and getting the word out to so many people recognizing it was a terrible year for so many other people around the world. So I wanna make sure that's clear
Speaker 1 (01:49):
. Yeah, yeah. And there's, you know, a conflict of bounds. So, uh, we're just really pleased and we're grateful to everyone listening, um, that, that you take your time, you know, a piece of your day to spend with us and, and listen to what we have to say. So today, bill, we're going to talk about confirmation bias. And so I'm curious, what is it and how do we get fooled because of it?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, confirmation bias is kind of a scientific researcher term that, that came out about the idea that if you have an issue or a belief or a theory that you're investigating and you just have one belief about it, and there could be other possibilities, but you just have one theory, one belief, you're likely to confirm your theory. So in today's world of so much conflicting information, so many conflicts, and especially high conflict situations where there's opposite information, what do you do? Well, a lot of people just pick one and latch onto it, and that's called confirmation bias. And they go about proving it to themselves by including information that kind of fits with their theory. They exclude information that conflicts with their theory. Well, that couldn't be true, of course, so don't even consider that. And vague information, they kind of twist it to fit into their theory.
(03:20):
So that's confirmation bias. But another part of that is if you're an investigator or an interviewer, somebody trying to figure something out, and you have this one theory, the people you talk to will be influenced by your belief in your theory, especially children. And we see this as an issue in a lot of high conflict family court cases, um, and adult disputes as well in families, the workplace in, in the world. So, so what we do, where we get fooled is somebody's intense about their point of view. We absorb it cuz we absorb the emotions and we stop considering other points of view. So that's confirmation bias and that we can easily get fooled more and more these days with a flood of intense, uh, beliefs and information.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Last week's episode we talked about brainwashing, right? Is that the same? Is it different?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
It's similar in that when you, let's say like in a divorce and you have a parent who tells you that's all the other parent's fault and you spend all your time just with that parent, your brain kind of pushes out some of the old information about the other parent replaces it with all this new negative information. So it's kind of like that. And this can happen in any setting, uh, certainly happens in political debates, it can happen in scientific debates, it can happen in universities and healthcare agencies, et cetera, where people are have an issue, then they have to resolve, is it this way or is it that way? And when confirmation bias comes into it, people close their mind, they kind of brainwash themselves and stop looking for information. Of course, the answer is you've gotta keep an open mind forever. You may lean more this way, the more information you get. But don't rule out possibilities, especially in the modern world where new information may actually be better than what you've been working with before. So it's, yeah, so we kind of brainwash ourselves. If we get into confirmation bias, we just repeat the same thing to ourselves, and that's a problem. So we gotta stay open minded.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
So you can almost change the name of social media to confirmation bias . That's what happens on social media all the time. You
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Know, that's it. And it's programmed all those algorithms to reinforce what they think you already think and they give you more and more extreme versions of what you think. And, and I was just reading about something about anorexic kids, you know, teenagers that get into losing weight as a way to solve their problems, and they, they get more and more anorexic kid information and it starts to feel like the whole world's thinking in terms of starving themselves. And so they repeat that and they brainwash themselves with that. So you're absolutely right. So that's a danger of social media. People don't realize it's because it, no, it narrows it down in bad ways.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Uh, it's, it's like programming your brain, unfortunately. Uh, you know, uh, I recall the first time I heard the term meta-analysis, it was, uh, maybe 20, 25 years ago by, um, I was on a legislative subcommittee. And one of the, uh, members of the committee was, was Dr. Bill Fabricius here at Arizona State University, um, here in the us. And, um, he kind of introduced the committee to this, this concept of meta-analysis. Instead of taking one piece of research and relying on it to form your opinion and make your decision for some piece of legislation or policy, why don't we look at all the research on that topic? So we have a meta-analysis and I think that could really combat confirmation bias, right?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Absolutely. That's the way to go, is to make your sources of information as broad as possible. And then you start seeing, well, the conclusions are heading this way, but you still know there's some outliers that you take into account, say, well, well what about that? And sometimes the exceptions slowly builds. Like we see in court cases, um, court of appeals cases that it's not unusual that one of, uh, justices like a Supreme Court for a state or the nation has a dissent and they say, I dissent because of this, this, and this. And you figure, okay, well eight outta nine judges agreed, but one dissented. And so we're going with those eight out of nine. That's the official decision. But over time, the dissent starts to make sense and leads towards better decisions. So by keeping an open mind, we, we can move towards better and better decisions. So confirmation bias is really the enemy of good decisions in many ways.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
How did you learn about confirmation bias?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Well, it's interesting. I learned about it in the 1990s when I was in law school, and I'd already been a therapist, uh, for a decade or so. And it came up because I, I was a social worker. I, I came upon these two cases that were in the news where, uh, parents had, people had been abused of child sexual abuse. The 1990s, there was people in daycare centers were going to jail for 40 years, things like that because of testimony of children about being sexually abused. Now, child sexual abuse is a terrible thing. It's still under reported, but it's a confusing thing. And the way you interview children can distort your information because children absorb your bias. And so what happened is police and social workers, yes, I'm a social worker, and social workers messed up with this somewhat. Um, if they had a belief and they told a child, we know something happened to you, we know your father did this.
(09:54):
If you wanna go home, just tell us the truth and then we'll be done. Well, that social worker or police investigator honestly believed in the one theory that it must have happened. And so the child starts saying things that fit the theory of the investigator. And what's amazing is a month later, even if it was totally made up, they don't even realize that they automatically do it a month later. They remember the false statement they made and they repeated as if it was true. So this is where, and it was shocking and there was good research. The, uh, American Association came out with a book called Jeopardy in the courtroom. And I was starting to get, as a lawyer, um, cases of child sexual abuse. Some were true, some were false. And I was able to figure them out because I understood what you had to look for and multiple theories.
(10:56):
But people were headed to prison for 40 years in some daycare center cases. And that research, uh, and book, uh, really helped change how children are interviewed and got a lot of people that had been falsely accused out of prison when it was very clear that in their daycare center, no one had killed squirrels and rabbits and elephants. There was no evidence of blood on the floor, but the children said these horrific things because of the way they were questioned. So that's when I learned about confirmation bias and it immediately was helpful in my own cases when I became a lawyer.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
I imagine, I mean, that, that's really fascinating. And it, it took me back to the, you know, when you and I first met back in 2005 and uh, you know, I was working at the Arizona Supreme Court Administrative office of the courts and had, you know, I was, I kept in contact with judges and was responsible for bringing in good training and, um, and talking to all the, the stakeholders in family law. And the common thread was, was what do we do with these allegations of child abuse, child sex, sex abuse, and domestic violence? So, uh, you know, when when I invited you to come to Arizona and train provided training, thinking we'd have, you know, maybe 30 or 35 people and we had to close the doors at 200, it was because this topic is just, you know, it's so confusing, like you said, and, um, we, it, it's, it's really, it's a really tough topic in family law. And it can be in workplace and, and other places as well. So even in families or, you know, on social media. Yeah, really interesting. So how big of a problem do you think, you know, confirmation biases today? I mean, we've already talked about social media, but you know, what types of situations, uh, other situations does it cause trouble in?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Well, I think it's a huge issue today and growing bigger because people don't know about it. And so they guess, they guess who do I believe? What information do I believe? There's so many sources of information. I think about, you know, when I grew up and there were three TV stations, there were three networks. And if they said the same thing, then that must be the truth. And what everybody thinks nowadays, there's, you know, hundreds of sources of information and it's not at all clear what's what. So everyone needs to learn how to really think in an open-minded way. Now, this especially comes up in legal disputes. We think about things, um, you know, domestic violence. I've had cases where it certainly was true. I've had cases where it was exaggerated in cases where it wasn't true at all. It was a false allegation. And these have to be taken seriously.
(13:55):
And frankly, most of them are true, but there's a significant number that are false. I don't know, 10, 15% from my experience. Same with child sexual abuse allegation. This is like the nuclear bomb of family law. And so my experience and I did a, uh, study, uh, I think it was 2006, 120 family lawyers responded. And it turned out people believe, and this wasn't a thoroughly objective study, it was more based on beliefs, but family lawyers believed about a third of child sexual abuse allegations were true. And about a third were false, but honestly believed a parent thought that that's what was happening. And then about a third were knowingly false, where people intentionally did it to get control of the child, get more child support, destroy the other parent cuz they were upset about the divorce, all of that. So you really have to have an open mind.
(15:00):
Now these are only about 2% of divorce cases. It has child sexual abuse allegations and, but that's a lot, that's a lot of cases. That's true. So if you're looking at, you know, a million divorces a year, I suppose, but if a third or true a third or false, but honestly believed in a third or false and knowingly false, you've gotta really figure these out. And so this is one of the biggest problems I get consulted on cuz I'm a social worker as well as a lawyer, and I've had cases that, that were knowingly false where I got sanctions, which is very hard to get, but I was able to prove that the parent doing it, it was false. They, they told other people, they were plotting it. We interviewed, I took depositions of their witnesses and their stories quickly fell apart, all of these things.
(15:59):
Uh, so that's an unusual case to get sanctions for that. And I've had true cases, I've had a couple cases where people went to jail because of child sexual abuse and, and I've had cases where parents believed it, but it wasn't true and they just latched onto it. Child was sad after visitation or parenting time with the other parent, and they took that sadness to believe that they'd been horribly sexually abused. That was a histrionic parent, and it was her, her filter of the world was overly dramatic and this just fit right in. So professionals really need to be cautious about this. And frankly, I'm seeing this as a problem I know of, of cases, not not just child sexual abuse cases, but alienation cases where judges assume, you know, the, the, the father, the child doesn't wanna see dad because dad must have been, you know, mean to him and terrible.
(17:00):
So he just wants to be with mom and we're gonna let it be that way. And it's not true, but they go, well, they don't believe in alienation, then others say, oh, it must be alienation when in fact a parent is treating the child badly. So you've gotta have an open mind with all of these cases. And I think, you know, in today's news, think of the Harvey Weinstein case, think of the Bill Cosby case. These were true sexual abuse cases, sexual assault rape cases that people couldn't believe. It's like, you know, Harvey Weinstein couldn't do that. Look how big and powerful he is that, you know, look at Bill Cosby America's dad, you know, but you have to have an open mind. You have to believe the possibility that people are telling the truth as well as the possibility that they're not. Anyway, that's a long-winded answer, but it's a very big concern today.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
You're right. And, and it brought to mind for me, the me too movement, um, which was so hugely important and a, a huge turning point in, in the US and Ron's world, however, people began talking about you should believe every woman who claims to have, have had sexual assault or sexual abuse in some way. And, uh, it just struck my brain very wrong because , that that would assume that every, every single woman on the planet is telling the truth 100% of the time, right? Yeah. So that's, that's the ultimate form of, of confirmation bias. And we know that can't be true, right?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
You know, I remember 20 years ago, 25 years ago, a judge saying women wouldn't lie about domestic violence. And, and then they started getting cases where women had lied about domestic violence. And so, you know, and children wouldn't lie, children are heavily influenced by the people that are around them. They may not, they may believe what they're saying, even if it's not true. And they start learning how to lie at a pretty young age, you know, four or five, they can start figuring out how to kind of shape things. No, no, I didn't have a cookie, mommy. That wasn't me .
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Right?
(19:13):
I didn't do it. Who is my sister? Right? Mm. Thinking more along this line about the, the me too movement and, and just assuming that everyone's telling the truth. I, I guess let's explore that a little bit further for our, for our listeners. In what type of situation or case could you imagine where, uh, or maybe an example you have where someone, um, alleged, uh, the sexual assault, um, a woman, right? And it wasn't actually true. I mean, I, I, where I'm headed here obviously is someone who may have, um, you know, a, a personality disorder of some, uh, type. So what, what do you think Bill?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Well actually, I know somebody who accused in a divorce with one husband, uh, accused them falsely of sexual abuse and then used the same allegations when she got divorced from her next husband. So that's, that's one case. Um, occasionally you hear about them in the news, there isn't that much and people always say, oh, don't talk about that, because then people will play down everybody's allegations of sexual abuse. And that's where we really have to keep an open mind because I would say most of these are true, but there's a significant false amount to get an advantage. I don't have a a case at my fingertips of, uh, uh, an adult, but I know specific cases of, of false allegations with children. But any kind of thing, there was the guy, Jesse smell it, he said it was beat up by some MAGA supporters and so the police are, you know, searching and investigating.
(20:54):
It turns out that was made up and he ended up, I think at a six month jail sentence, something like that for false allegations. It was totally fabricated. Then on the other hand, uh, the Susan Smith case from many years ago who drowned her two young sons in a lake pushed the, pushed the car into the lake and drowned them and said that a black man came along and she's a white woman, said a black man came along and kidnapped the kids. And that was totally false. And police are looking for a black man and black men get, you know, falsely accused all the time of things like this. So we see it and it can be in any direction and any political persuasion, men do this, women do this, et cetera. But as we enter another year of when there's a lot of conflict in a polarized country, we really have to be critical about what the information we're getting is.
(21:57):
And everyone has to learn to do their own thinking through and keep an open mind. Once your mind closes, then this chance of confirmation bias just grows. So always, I always tell myself, I never know for sure, but everything I see points this way in this case, but there may be a new piece of information, who knows? But it, but you can know enough to make decisions. And that's, that's what I try to convince judges cuz I have ju judges I think really aren't trained in this and over and over again, a lot of my consultation cases from around the country these days are people in who, who are in courts with judges who jumped to a conclusion early in the case and no longer let any information in into their thinking or maybe even into the hearings. It's like, I've heard enough, well, you haven't heard enough.
(22:55):
You, you always need to have a little bit of room to hear another point of view. And I, I teach judges some of the time and I say, don't come down hard on one or the other side. Like, you know exactly what's happening. Have empathy for both sides in a high conflict divorce case and say from all the evidence, this is the conclusion that I must reach. This is where it's pointing. Um, but I understand this is a difficult situation and maybe things are different from what I'm seeing, but this is the way I have to make my decision with what I've been presented. So you can make decisions but still be empathetic and open-minded.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
What about resistant refuse cases in family court?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
So I've got many examples of this first where there's the assumption that the parent who's being rejected has done something wrong. Often, dad, you know, dad's done something wrong. And so I think of just kind of classic case where they say, you know, child's resisting seeing dad only wants to be with mom. And so the court says, well, okay for now, uh, we're gonna, you know, have that and then the child doesn't see dad and grows more and more resistant. This is probably the classic alienation case. Okay, I got one in mind right now. So dad actually, it wasn't child sexual abuse, it was into, uh, internet pornography but not into kids. And the kids didn't want to go with him more than a little bit of time. And the older child said, you know, eventually I don't want to see him at all. But over the course of like a two year court case, the kids grew away from dad because they were with mom more of the time and mom was really angry at dad that he was who he was and she was probably had some narcissistic traits and looked down on dad.
(25:02):
And so over the course of the case, the older child see seeing him, um, and I think I've mentioned this case before, and the younger child tried to stay neutral, but it wasn't about dad, it was about mom. Oh, this is the case where, um, uh, the girl said, I don't want to see him cuz the way he wears his hair and in court one day. And mom said that, and in court one day the judge says, well dad, why don't you just cut your hair? And it's like, he didn't get it. That's not where the resistance is coming from, it's coming from mom. So that's an alienation case. Now let me give you another hence. And so it was assumed it was all about dad. Well that wasn't, and the case got worse. Let's take another case that was assumed to be alienation when in fact the, the other parent was outrageously angry, had a very wide mood strings, yelled at the child a lot of the time, and the child wanted to get away from that parent.
(26:04):
And in that case that was mom and the child wanted to go live with dad and just like, I can't stand. And the mom said, well, dad must be alienating the child. And that became a big uproar in court case. And eventually he, he did end up living primarily with his father. But these cases just blow up and they go on and on because of confirmation bias, people quickly make decisions and it's a hard position for judges to be in cuz they have maybe 12, maybe 20 cases in court at a time in the morning. And so they, they're kind of quickly jumping to conclusions, oh, okay, this is a, this kind of case and this is what I have to do without really wait a minute, is this really now temporary hearings? They may have to make protective orders, but the next hearing they have to go, okay, open mind, I'm ready to hear your information. And I'm not assuming it's either way. I wanna know, I want enough information to make a really well-informed decision.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Challenging, very challenging. So how can someone avoid getting fooled by confirmation bias? Um, when, when there's allegations of abuse, whether it's in family court or anywhere really,
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Right? The simple thing is to have three theories of your case. So you have two conflicting statements. So you said police, so police go to a domestic call and they separate the parent, the mom and dad, and they sit down, they hear from mom and they hear her from dad. So you gotta have three theories of the case. One is that one parent's telling the truth, this is it, this is what's really happening. And the other parent's not accurate. Maybe they believe something, but it's not even true. So the first theory is it's true. Second theory is it's not true at all and it's coming from the other person and that they're, uh, someone's being falsely accused here. The third theory is both people are acting badly and the problem is both of them, this is what courts should have, police should have, family members should have, let's say you've got two sisters and one of them says one thing and one says the opposite. Well, who are you gonna believe? Well, listen to the information with an open mind. See what's what makes more sense. If you like one sister better than the other, you may automatically believe them and you might be wrong. So we're entering an age where we really need to be open-minded and critical in our thinking. And having three theories of any conflict situation I think will help everybody
Speaker 1 (28:52):
A lot. And it's really an application of, uh, let's say a an investigation of an unattended death, right? When, when law enforcement come up on an unat, you know, are call to an unattended death, they, they immediately decide whether or have to explore and investigate whether it's a natural death, a homicide, or a suicide. So there's three theories, right? And let's explore and see which one is correct. Now in this one, you know, that particular case, not two won't be correct at the same time . So it's, but the concept of really exploring in conflict, exploring those theories instead of just believing someone. And, and you know, we've, we've talked a lot in the past about emotional persuasion and contagion and that can influence some of this, but, uh, so let's wrap up with a final question about how can we avoid getting fooled by a person with a high conflict conflict personality?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Well, I think having those three theories so you have a healthy skepticism, and that's a phrase I think we all need to have in the coming years, is a healthy skepticism. Don't be extreme, but, you know, be cautious. But the other thing is with high conflict people, they tend to be more emotional than the average person. More dramatic, more extreme. And we get emotionally hooked. I think it hooks our right brain and our left brains where we do most of our logical problem solving. So you gotta watch out. If you're suddenly looking at things through a right brain defensive lens, you're gonna see things in all or nothing terms. And so you've gotta be cautious about that. Is this really true or am I emotionally hooked? And the thing about being emotionally hooked is it stops you from thinking people become negative advocates for other people, for high conflict people and try to persuade you to agree with them, but they're emotionally hooked and uninformed.
(30:47):
So they need to be informed and we need to be careful. We don't become negative advocates for high conflict people that way. So we have to keep becoming informed and say, is that really true? What is going on here? And do I have a part to play in this? That's always something to look at too, because sometimes we think things are all somebody else's fault and we don't realize that we're part of the problem. And so confirmation bias tells us it's all your fault. Instead of that, maybe I share some of the responsibility here. So for parents, for lawyers, for judges, for police, for everybody, I think we just really have to, you know, ask ourselves questions and not jump to conclusions. And that's the basic message.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you Bill, and, uh, I hope this has been helpful to you, our listeners and, uh, keeping in mind to just keep an open mind, right? Keep in mind, keep an open mind .
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Exactly. Healthy skepticism.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Love it. Love it. Next week we'll be talking about explaining personality disorders to the average person. Um, this can be kind of tricky and kind of challenging, uh, but we'll dig into that next, next time. In the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast and, uh, tell your friends about us and we'd be grateful if you leave us a review wherever you listen to this podcast. Until next time, keep learning and practicing these skills and be kind to yourself while we all try to find the missing piece. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music, by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and zip Moran. Find the show, show notes and transcripts@truestory.fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.