Thinking Allowed

Confirming To Deceive
by Jon Thompson

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In this month’s Thinking Allowed, I want to describe something I use all the time: confirmation bias.

If you’re aiming for believability in your close-up mentalism performances, you need to use every tiny scrap of useful help you can get. Confirmation bias is one such piece of help.

Confirmation Bias is a quirk in our thinking that causes us to accept information that confirms what we already believe, while also rejecting everything that goes against that belief. This is a very deep-seated feature of the human psyche and is one of the most reliable tools we have available for weaving patter that persuades. It’s right up there with the personal validation fallacy – the foundation upon which cold reading so powerfully builds.

Put simply, if we can discover what the spectator already believes and we can adapt our presentation to confirm that belief, she’s more likely to accept what we tell her. In fact, done well, it’s possible that she won’t be able to help herself accepting it. If, on the other hand, we try to show her she’s wrong in her beliefs, at best, she’ll see what we do as a trick, poorly presented against her wishes, and no more.

Confirmation bias is one of the most closely studied and best understood of our errors in thinking. Knowledge of its existence also goes back a long way. In 1620, for instance, English philosopher Francis Bacon described it in his book "Novum Organum" as follows:

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.... And such is the way of all superstitions, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, although this happened much oftener, neglect and pass them by.”

 

Bacon wrote this passage nearly four hundred years ago. And yet, discovering it quoted in a paper written by professor Raymond S. Nickerson of Tufts University, I was struck by how surprisingly modern Bacon’s thinking was.

Now, thanks to a recent study, we even know what’s happening physically in the brain when confirmation bias kicks in. In 2006, Professor Drew Westen of Emory University in Atlanta announced the results of work in which he scanned the brains of 30 subjects while presenting them with both positive and negative statements about politicians they either liked or disliked.

The scans showed that part of the brain associated with logic and reasoning, the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex, was very poorly activated while the subjects evaluated each statement, showing that they weren’t assessing each for truth based on clear, calm logic. Instead, parts of the brain associated with emotion, judgement and mental conflict resolution were lit up like Christmas trees.

Westen’s subjects were making emotional judgements about the statements and coming to the conclusion that best resolved the inner conflict they created. In other words, they accepted the statements that went along with what they already believed, and rejected those that didn’t. Westen said of his subjects: “they twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want.”

My use of confirmation bias is all about adding to the validity of pre-existing beliefs, just as the patter during hypnotic induction is all about adding to the validity of the process of slipping into trance. The more you seem to confirm her views, the more likely the spectator is to accept the subsequent assertions you make.

The Pierced Cat
I once accidentally invoked confirmation bias, very strongly and completely by accident in a friend while trying to tell her a joke. The idea was to give her a believable scenario and finish it with a silly punchline – a sucker punch, if you will.

I told her that a gang of youths had broken into a tattoo parlour a few days ago, and that they’d been going round town piercing cats’ ears using the equipment they stole. The punchline was: “Our poor little Snowball came home this morning with her ears positively dripping in diamante!” I thought this slightly camp and over the top phrasing would be so out of place that she’d get the joke – especially as she knows I don’t own or even like cats.

Instead, she looked increasingly shocked as she listened, and even seemed to ignore the punchline. Maybe she deliberately misheard it as being a neighbour’s cat to fit with what she was hearing. Confirmation bias is certainly capable of such things when invoked strongly enough.

Though I didn’t make a note of her exact words at the time, her reaction to my joke was to detail a litany of recent petty crimes she knew to have been perpetrated by rowdy youngsters. Clearly, she was happy to accept news of this latest outrage because it confirmed what she already believed about the local youth in general.

I think the underlying message to this story is to deliberately use confirmation bias only when you mean it, but it also shows the power it can have over us to add to our beliefs. My friend’s world for a time included cats with forcibly pierced ears.

The Astronaut Tax
Shortly after the pierced cat incident, I got a chance to deliberately use confirmation bias to plant an absurd suggestion in the mind of someone I met at a party. He was a bore and a racist with a particular hatred of Polish migrant workers in the UK. He accused them at length of all living the easy life on state benefits paid for by his taxes. This is completely at odds with the reality of hard-working Poles, by the way. This man was, therefore, a suitable target for some fun.

I first encouraged him to talk freely about his beliefs by asking deliberately easy, open questions to discover what he really believed. This was to imply that I was open to his dimwit views. To help appear to add to their validity, I said that “this problem” is very widespread and that it had been on the radio that Eastern European astronauts had, in fact, been running the ultimate tax dodge for years. I said that the reason they don’t mind long stays in the International Space Station, despite the risks, is that it means they’re out of the country for long enough not to have to pay income tax. I was actually quite surprised at how well he accepted this.

Suitably greased up for easy entry into his odious mind, I then delivered the main, absurd suggestion. To counter this dodge, I said, the European Space Agency was going to levy a special “astronaut tax” on these high-teach freeloaders. I sealed the suggestion in his mind by saying I’d subsequently seen it confirmed on the Financial Times web site.

These assertions were all it took. So wrapped up was he in the idea that this sympathetic stranger was confirming and adding evidence fro his bigoted views, that he was more than willing to accept the astronaut tax as real. He agreed that it was a good idea and about time someone did something about “them”. I was so proud. Fro all I know, he’s still being laughed at, and it serves him right!

So, we can use confirmation bias to get people to a point where they positively want to believe what we tell them just by crafting our message in ways that sympathise with and confirm their beliefs before we begin the main presentation of an effect. But, while this is a very powerful tool, it does carry one limitation: the beliefs the spectator already holds always dictate the suggestions she’ll accept in addition via confirmation bias. For this reason, it’s vital that you find out what those beliefs are first. Never assume.

If your spectator has a firm belief in ghosts, for instance, it doesn’t follow that you can convince her easily of the Loch Ness Monster. It’s highly likely, however, that in the same situation, you can easily convince her that sometimes, when you get a particularly strong intuition that turns to be right, you have a feeling of a presence that reminds you of your late grandfather smiling over you. Personally, I feel that such a deception is particularly ugly, but no less powerful for that.

 

Jon Thompson