Seeing What We Want to See: How Confirmation Bias Shapes Our Reality

The Trap We All Fall Into

If you’ve ever gotten into an argument online—or, heaven forbid, a family group chat—you’ve probably experienced confirmation bias in action. It’s that mental glitch that makes us double down when someone challenges what we believe. We start pulling up “evidence” that supports our point of view, ignoring or discounting anything that doesn’t.

It’s not that we’re intentionally lying to ourselves. The brain just loves to be right. Feeling “correct” gives us a quick hit of dopamine and a sense of safety. It feels good to confirm that our worldview still makes sense. But over time, that same instinct can trap us inside a distorted version of reality—one that gets narrower the longer we cling to it.

What Confirmation Bias Actually Is

In psychology, confirmation bias is the tendency to seek, interpret, and remember information in a way that supports what we already believe.

If you think your boss doesn’t like you, every neutral comment starts sounding like criticism.
If you believe your partner is pulling away, every late text reply feels like proof.
If you’re convinced you’re unlucky, every small setback reinforces the story.

The facts don’t necessarily change—but the lens you’re looking through does.

It’s like wearing tinted glasses and forgetting they’re on. The world takes on that hue, and you start believing that’s how it really looks.

The Psychology Behind It

From an evolutionary standpoint, confirmation bias made sense. Early humans needed quick judgments to survive. “This berry made me sick once; avoid it forever.” “That tribe attacked us before; they’re dangerous.” Those snap associations helped us live long enough to reproduce.

But in the modern world—where nuance matters, and threats are usually psychological rather than physical—those same shortcuts create massive problems. They make it harder to learn, adapt, or see situations clearly.

The mind’s goal is often comfort, not truth. And confirmation bias is one of its favorite tools.

How It Shows Up in Daily Life

We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures. But in practice, we often build emotional cases and then go searching for intellectual evidence to justify them.

It shows up when we:

• Read articles that agree with our opinions while dismissing opposing ones as “biased.”
• Remember the few bad interactions that confirm a negative self-view and forget the dozens of good ones.
• Surround ourselves with people who echo our beliefs because it feels easier than being challenged.

Even in therapy, clients sometimes say, “I knew it—I am broken,” after a single setback. That’s confirmation bias at work, twisting an isolated event into a narrative that supports an old belief.

It’s not stupidity. It’s just wiring. But like any cognitive bias, it can be rewired—with awareness and practice.

The Cost of Being Right

Here’s the quiet danger of confirmation bias: it keeps us from growing.

When we only seek validation for what we already believe, we rob ourselves of discovery. We start seeing what we expect, hearing what we want, and missing what we need.

And it’s not just intellectual. Emotionally, it locks us into repetitive patterns.

If you believe people always leave, you might subconsciously test your relationships until they do.
If you believe you’re a failure, you might avoid opportunities that could prove you wrong.
If you believe nothing ever changes, you’ll stop trying to change.

Confirmation bias becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And the longer we live inside that loop, the harder it gets to see outside of it.

Challenging the Bias

Breaking free from confirmation bias isn’t about “thinking positive.” It’s about thinking honestly.

Here are a few ways to start:

1. Catch the pattern, not just the thought.
When you notice a belief getting reinforced (“See, I knew they didn’t care”), pause and ask, “What evidence would prove me wrong?” If your answer is “nothing,” that’s a sign you’re in bias territory.

2. Seek out disconfirming evidence.
This sounds counterintuitive, but it’s powerful. Look for information or experiences that challenge your beliefs. It’s uncomfortable—but growth often starts with discomfort.

3. Practice intellectual humility.
Admit that you might be wrong. That simple act can completely change how your brain processes new information. When you loosen your grip on “being right,” you gain access to actually learning.

4. Engage in mindfulness.
Mindfulness helps you observe thoughts as passing events, not absolute truths. Over time, you start seeing how much your mind bends reality to fit your stories.

5. Talk it out with someone objective.
A therapist, mentor, or even a grounded friend can help you reality-check your assumptions. Sometimes it takes another set of eyes to point out what your own can’t see.

The Role of Emotion

It’s worth noting: confirmation bias isn’t just cognitive—it’s emotional.

We don’t cling to beliefs because they’re logical. We cling because they protect us.

If you’ve been betrayed before, believing “people can’t be trusted” might feel safer than risking vulnerability again.
If you’ve experienced failure, believing “I’m just not capable” might save you from future disappointment.

So before dismantling a belief, it helps to ask: What is this belief protecting me from?

When you meet the underlying emotion—fear, shame, grief, rejection—the bias starts to lose its grip.

Seeing Clearly Again

Awareness is the antidote. When you start to see your biases in real time, reality begins to widen again. You start noticing contradictions, exceptions, and nuances—the things that make life richer and more interesting.

It’s a lot like cleaning a foggy window. The world outside was always there; you just couldn’t see it clearly through the condensation of your own certainty.

The goal isn’t to have no biases (that’s impossible). The goal is to stop letting them run the show.

To see more clearly. To understand more deeply. To hold your own beliefs loosely enough that truth can still reach you.

The Humility of Not Knowing

At the heart of all this lies one of the hardest things for the ego to accept: we don’t know everything.

That’s not a flaw—it’s a freedom.

When you stop needing to be right, you open the door to being curious. And curiosity is infinitely more powerful than certainty.

Certainty shuts the book. Curiosity keeps turning the pages.

So maybe that’s the work: to stay humble enough to question our assumptions, brave enough to face our blind spots, and wise enough to know that reality doesn’t need our permission to exist.

---

Final Reflection

Confirmation bias isn’t something you “fix” once. It’s something you continually meet, examine, and outgrow. It’s part of being human.

But every time you pause before defending your viewpoint, or admit you might not see the full picture—you reclaim a little piece of your freedom from it.

And in that space between what you think you know and what might actually be true… that’s where real growth begins.

Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC