A recent article in the Wall Street Journal detailed a psychological phenomenon, entitled the “Confirmation Bias,” which explained in that context why people make and hold on to the investments that they do. 

About 35 years ago, during my Experimental Psychology class at San Jose State University, I spent an entire semester studying a similar thesis. It was called the Experimenter Bias process.  Drawing from a resource written in 1966 entitled the Rosenthal Effect, I set up an experiment to demonstrate the impact that experimenter bias had on the actual outcome of the experiment.  

The Rosenthal Effect demonstrated the impact of teachers’ expectations on student performance as measured by reading scores.  There were two experimental groups and one control group.  In one of the groups, the teacher was told prior to the semester that the students in her class were particularly gifted.  One teacher was told that the students in her class were developmentally slower than the rest of the school population.  The final teacher was not given any instruction regarding the nature of her class.  As you might suspect the teacher who was told that her students were gifted ended up having reading scores by the end of the semester that were significantly higher than the teacher that was not given any pre-instruction.  The teacher who was told that her students were developmentally slower ended up having reading scores that were significantly lower than the teacher that was considered part of the control group.  The control group teacher had reading scores that fell in a normal distribution. 

In my experiment, I demonstrated that people who believed strongly in extra sensory perception (ESP) got better results with the same population of subjects than those who believed that ESP was not possible.

One of our clients, Robyn the CEO of Intellisource, requested that I write an article about the Confirmation Bias. Since then, I have noticed daily evidence of this dynamic which further illustrates the power of this process.  A few days ago, I was facilitating a mid-management meeting at a client’s office in Houston. One team member was worried that another team member, who was tasked to develop a new technology platform for operations, did not have the expertise necessary to make intelligent and informed decisions.  The member who was worried began asking a series of questions without waiting for a complete response before firing off the next question. 

His facial expression was agitated and his voice rapid and intense.  The recipient of these rapid fire questions was nervous in his response anticipating that no matter what answer he gave, he would not satisfy his worried friend.  The worried leader clearly viewed the other person’s pauses as signs that he did not know what he was doing.  I finally interrupted what appeared to be a Perry Mason trial and suggested that our worried friend had a statement to make that was masked by the litany of questions being asked. 

After some coaching he finally stated, “I am afraid that if you do not include expertise in warehousing then the software you subsequently design will not meet all of our needs.” The expert in technology then responded, “I felt that no matter what I had said to you, that it would not satisfy your needs.  As a matter of fact, in my last position I had hired an expert in warehousing and we designed a customized solution that subsequently won awards.”  He went on to say that prior to making any definitive decisions he would bring his findings to the leadership team for their final input and counsel. 

Whatever we look for with great intent we are sure to find.  There is a part of the brain referred to as the reticular activating system.  This part of the brain acts as a pre text. Have you ever decided to buy a new car?  You lock into the style, color and make of the car that you want.  You then drive on the freeway and the world is infested with them.