We live in a virtually advanced world. Social media content dominates major social interactions and entertainment.
According to a report released by Hootsuite, social media platforms gained 490 million new users who scroll through these apps daily. With more than 31 million YouTube channels, 1 billion Instagram accounts, and 3 million streamers on Twitter.
Social media is a strong platform to convey your views every day. We only get to hear a single side of the story between the tale of endless feeds. thanks to powerful proprietary algorithms and confirmation bias.
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Confirmation bias is not new among marketers. It can be defined as a tendency of people to interpret information in ways that further their own beliefs. For example, we all have biases, like believing brown cars are more likely to get into an accident than white cars, or that overweight people are less healthy than lean people.
When it comes to providing products and services on social media. Those with confirmation bias may choose to emphasize potential benefits while ignoring the downsides of what they are selling. They will likely stick only with the positive aspects of their product or service when promoting or marketing it via social media. This is done without providing full details about what you’re getting yourself into such as the possible risks involved.
Confirmation bias keeps on shaping the way we tend to interpret data from different niches. This approach directly or indirectly impacts our ability to make decisions in society, home, or global platforms.
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We tend to record a bunch of information in our minds, experience it, and match it with our expectations. Often, confirmation bias is called myside bias. Since confirmation bias is prominent on social media, specific tools are used for managing and marginalising its impact.
Let us understand confirmation bias with an example.
There is a person (A) who believes that left-handed people are way more creative than right-handed people. Every time, A comes across a left-handed person who is creative, it gives evidence to his belief. However, in reality, this data might not be the absolute truth.
Confirmation bias directly affects how the information is gathered. Also, it interprets the information.
For example, suppose you are supporting a particular cause. In that case, you might not take the pain to seek information from authentic sources. Whereas you tend to interpret and recall stories that support pre-existing ideas. But how does this affect content creators?
Examples of How Social Media Content Can Spark Confirmation Bias
Many believe that confirmation bias is one of the many reasons we are drawn to all social media sites.
One of those is Science journalist David McRaney who runs a podcast called “You Are Not So Smart”. He also says that social media can confirm what we already believe in and attracts us towards it each day.
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Brands like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on analyse their success based on the number of hours users spend. Therefore, several adaptive algorithms flood us with lots of important information.
Above all, social media has eliminated traditional gatekeepers for evaluating different pieces of information. This is done for accuracy and newsworthiness. The introduction of niche online groups has brought a storm of echo chambers.
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Consequences of Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias confirms our existing beliefs. It prevents us from analysing situations from different angles before landing on the actual decision. It not only affects the overall decision but leads to wrong choices.
For example, before elections, people tend to paint their favourite candidate positively while casting the other person in negatively.
Without understanding objective facts, people are likely to interpret information in a biased way. They try not to form new beliefs but support only existing ideas. Hence, important information is often missed. Hence, we can conclude that people are becoming more polarised due to their political confirmation bias, woke culture, etc.
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Creators must understand this psychological externality that occurs due to their content. Further, this influences people in a different direction. Audiences can very often form polarised opinions that may hamper growth for creators. TagMango helps creators monetise better in this evergrowing and complicated Creator Economy.
