History Main / ConfirmationBias

* A particularly nasty variant happened in the Renaissance. A few scholars put forth the idea that the five hundred year or so period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the "high middle ages" was a time of absolute ignorance where their was almost no development of civilization and science. They dubbed it the Dark Ages. When evidence refuting this theory was discovered they not only ignored it, they ''destroyed it.'' The damage can still be seen in modern history and the [[DungAges popular consciousness]]. [[labelnote:The Motive]]Modern evidence points to the idea that the Renaissance was a period of great scientific and artistic progression, but also great cultural ''regression.'' People in the Renaissance seemed to bathe far less than in the high medieval times and the dark ages for example. Church corruption and religious fanaticism were at an all-time high and the gap between the peasantry and nobility was much much greater. Renaissance scholars thus had to lie a great deal about the past to "prove" that the then modern period was such a leap forward. [[/labelnote]]

* ''WebComic/GRRLPower'' tackles the WolvesAlwaysHowlAtTheMoon trope when it introduces a werewolf character. As he explains, wolves howl a lot, and occasionally there's a moon, but since wolves howling at the moon is such a romantisized image, people only notice when it happens.

* A particularly nasty variant happened in the Renaissance. A few scholars put forth the idea that the five hundred year or so period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the "high middle ages" was a time of absolute ignorance where their was almost no development of civilization and science. They dubbed it the Dark Ages. When evidence refuting this theory was discovered they not only ignored it, they ''destroyed it.'' The damage can still be seen in modern history and the [[DungAges popular consciousness]]. [[labelnote:The Motive]]Modern evidence points to the idea that the Renaissance was a period of great scientific and artistic progression, but also great cultural ''regression.'' People in the Renaissance seemed to bath far less than in the high medieval times and the dark ages for example. Church corruption and religious fanaticism were at an all-time high and the gap between the peasantry and nobility was much much greater. Renaissance scholars thus had to lie a great deal about the past to "prove" that the then modern period was such a leap forward. [[/labelnote]]

* ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'': A consistent plot point in each killing game is that Monokuma believes that despair and self-preservation will overcome the players enough to kill without remorse. Of course, he doesn't count the "incentives" he gives such as [[spoiler:[[VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc threatening family members]], [[VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair sending out a virus that makes people insane]], or ''[[Anime/Danganronpa3 making players kill themselves]]'' to ensure somebody dies on time]] as contributing to these outcomes.

[[folder:Video Games]]
* Confirmation bias drives the mindset of the Reapers in the VideoGame/MassEffect series. They were created by an advanced Artificial Intelligence who became convinced that synthetic life would inevitably attack and destroy organic life, and created the reapers as a way to supposedly "preserve" organic life in a synthetic form. The idea that organics and synthetics could co-exist peacefully (as demonstrated by [[{{Fembot}} EDI]], the Geth, and (in ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'') [[BenevolentAI SAM]]) never occurred to them or were considered one-off anomalies every time the situation popped up.
[[/folder]]

* This is a major reason for why, in law, eyewitness accounts are taken with a grain of salt: the SelfServingMemory is a very real phenomenon, and it can be easy to convince a witness that they saw something when they didn't.

* The audience of ''Series/RealTimeWithBillMaher'' have been accused of this as they heckle guests who fall on the opposite side from the host.

* The Republican National Committee, in the wake of the 2012 presidential election, admitted this as one of their problems. Many conservatives spoke only to people on their side or paid attention to news sources slanted in their favor (such as the Fox News Channel), which was likewise basing their stories only on what their own side was saying. As a result, they were convinced that Mitt Romney would be elected in a landslide, and basically let his campaign coast, confident he would win handily. Once that bubble of comfort was burst, however, the results were less than pretty. Karl Rove in particular had an on-camera meltdown when Fox News called Ohio[[note]]a big swing state and Mitt Romney's major hope to remain in the race, leading to the memetic response from Megyn Kelly: "Is this for real or math you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better?"[[/note]] for Barack Obama.

* The Republican National Committee, in the wake of the 2012 presidential election, admitted this as one of their problems. Many conservatives spoke only to people on their side or paid attention to news sources slanted in their favor (such as the Fox News Channel), which was likewise basing their stories only on what their own side was saying. As a result, they were convinced that Mitt Romney would be elected in a landslide, and basically let his campaign coast, confident he would win handily. Once that bubble of comfort was burst, however, the results were less than pretty. Karl Rove in particular had an on-camera meltdown when Fox News called Ohio[[note]]a big swing state and Mitt Romney's major hope to remain in the race[[/note]] for Barack Obama.

** Ditto for ''The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee''. It's questionable if even the people it's allegedly preaching to find it funny. Comments on the comics SnarkBait blog [[http://www.joshreads.com The Comics Curmudgeon]] seem to indicate not...

** ''Series/TheDailyShow'' is the main example on the "left-wing" side. Ostensibly as a comedy show, it's become more and more political over the years and is even used by some people as a source of legitimate news. The investigative reports almost always take on a format where one side is represented by an activist who is sensible, if prone to jokes, while the other side is represented by a SnarkBait StrawmanPolitical, parodying the at times extreme confirmation bias found in shows they lambast while simultaneously employing it.
*** It may be noted that most of these SnarkBait [[StrawmanPolitical Political Strawmen]] [[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer are not fake, but actually believe everything they are saying]], and one of Stewarts' final episodes actually went out of their way to re-interview some of the "crazier" guests they had on the show to confirm. These guests, however, made it clear that they knew exactly what they were in for, but still considered it a win because they got their message out there, there would always be people who agreed with them, and in some cases simply loved being on the show anyway and thought it was just as funny and enjoyable as the audience did, if for different reasons.

*** Notably, the above two elements in particular have combined to make these commercials frequent SnarkBait.

** It happened again a few videos later, with another woman[[note]]portrayed by D'Arcy Carden of [[RetroactiveRecognition later]] ''Series/TheGoodPlace'' fame.[[/note]] coming in and searching for "Climate change is not real." Google responds with a massive pile of letters and the retort "Climate change ''is'' real." The woman then adopted the same smarmy tone and said (while making AirQuotes) "''Climate change'' is ''not'' real," narrowing it down once again to a single entry, which she snatched and swaggered out.

* Morgan Spurlock's ''Film/SuperSizeMe'' famously followed the filmmaker as he lived on nothing but UsefulNotes/McDonalds for thirty days, eating everything on the menu at least once and super-sizing every time it is offered. He suffered significant health and weight issues as a result. This appears to have been greatly aided by Spurlock suddenly changing to a sedentary lifestyle, eating far more than he needed to and sleeping a lot, as no one has been able to reproduce his results. Spurlock did all he could to reach the conclusion he wanted to reach, while many other studies have shown that combining [=McDonald's=] food with an active lifestyle and not overeating does not lead to health or weight issues. Spurlock himself explained in the documentary that he was replicating the non-active lifestyle of the average American.

* ''Theatre/{{Othello}}'': Scholars have suggested for centuries that Iago's lies are actually pretty flimsy; the tragedy comes from the fact that Othello is ''so'' willing to believe them.

** Conspiracy theorists also usually take any evidence that disagrees with them is part of the conspiracy theory but the virtue that it disagrees with them. And as a result, any sources that agree with them must be people who see through the conspiracy.

* Any pro-choice/pro-life commercial assumes the message it's giving. IE, an unborn baby is a person and thus abortion is murder = Pro-Life; or that it doesn't matter if the fetus is a person, because the woman ''definitely' is and has the right to control her own body and whether she wants to risk her own health (and even life) with a pregnancy = Pro-Choice.

* Any pro-choice/pro-life commercial assumes the message it's giving. IE, an unborn baby is a person and thus abortion is murder = Pro-Life; or they're not a person, and part of the woman thus her decision = Pro-Choice. It's doubtful anyone is ever converted by these, as both very rarely attempt to convince the viewer of the (non)person-hood of the unborn baby.

* The page quote comes from the Website/CollegeHumor sketch "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJD1Iwy5lUY If Google Was a Guy (Part 3)]]", where a woman searches Website/{{Google}} ([[AnthropomorphicPersonification who is in the form of a regular guy]]) about vaccines causing autism. Google comes up with ''a million'' results that say they don't, and ''one'' source that says they do. The woman snatches the latter result with a smarmy "I knew it!"

* Similar to the planetary orbits example above, one of the many (regarded by several mathematicians as crackpot) ideas about the "golden ratio"[[note]]which is an ironic misnomer; it's actually an algebraic irrational number[[/note]] phi (or "tau" as some mathematicians, wishing to disassociate themselves from such beliefs, prefer to call it) is that the "perfect" rectangle as far as human psychology is concerned is one whose sides are in the golden ratio. One psychologist did an experiment exploring this, and claimed that the results he got "proved" the idea; but others, attempting to repeat the experiment, were able only to conclude that the ideal rectangle for most people lies somewhere between 1:1 and 2:1. When this is mentioned to phi supporters, they tend to dismiss this inconvenient fact.[[note]]Interestingly, aspect ratios for visual formats have moved ''away'' from the near-golden 4:3 (TV/old movies) or 3:2 (35mm full-frame) to 16:9, which is nearly 2:1; many movies nowadays are in even more extreme ratios, ''wider'' than 2:1. So much for "the perfect rectangle".[[/note]]

* One variant of this is called [[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kafkatrapping kafkatrapping]][[note]][[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant No relation to]] KafkaKomedy[[/note]]. It's when you accuse someone of bigotry and then take their denial as proof that they're a bigot.

* Quinton Reviews discussed this a fair bit in his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jziiOMeChrc "Paul Is Dead"]] video, focusing on how many conspiracy theorists rely on this to get evidence--the massive catalog of Music/TheBeatles' material made it pretty easy for aspiring theorists to find cases of Music/PaulMcCartney being singled out or separated. In a more serious context, he pointed out a WhoShotJFK documentary that claimed there was a man with a gun in the infamous "grassy knoll" photograph. When they reached someone who claimed to have been there and seen three men, the documentary immediately "found" two other men in the photo, whom they had never noticed before despite poring over the photo constantly. The area these men were "seen" in is small, grainy, indistinct, and dark, meaning if you wanted to, you could say pretty much anyone was there and it would be difficult to disprove.

* The page quote comes from the Website/CollegeHumor sketch "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJD1Iwy5lUY If Google Was a Guy (Part 3)]]", where a woman searches Website/{{Google}} ([[AnthropomorphicPersonification who is in the form of a regular guy]]) about vaccines causing autism. Google comes up with ''a million'' results that they don't, and ''one'' source that says they do. The woman snatches the latter result with a smarmy "I knew it!"

** It happened again a few videos later, with another woman[[note]]portrayed by D'Arcy Carden of [[RetroactiveRecognition later]] ''Series/TheGoodPlace'' fame.[[/note]] coming in and searching for "Climate change isn't real." Google responds with a massive pile of letters and the retort "Climate change ''is'' real." The woman then adopted the same smarmy tone and said (while making AirQuotes) "'Climate change' is ''not'' real," narrowing it down once again to a single entry, which she snatched and swaggered out.

** It happened again a few videos later, with the same woman coming in and searching for "Climate change isn't real." Google responds with a massive pile of letters and the retort "Climate change ''is'' real." The woman then adopted the same smarmy tone and said (while making AirQuotes) "'Climate change' isn't real," narrowing it down once again to a single entry, which she snatched and swaggered out.

'''Google:''' ''[screaming]'' Just because I ''have it'' doesn't mean it'su TRUE!

** And ''I Drew This'', by ''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie'' creator Creator/DCSimpson.