Desirability bias is killing us.
One weekday afternoon, I walked into a hotel bar to meet a colleague. On the TV, a national news network was relaying a breaking story connected to the 2016 presidential election. I had just read a news article about the same issue, but to my shock, the TV network was recounting a completely different version of the same story. How would the American people find common ground in the months ahead if ostensibly factual news reporting was so polarized? Was the news article I read factually correct or was the television program reporting the real story? I didn’t really know. All I knew for sure was the version of the story that I wished to be true.
Desirability bias can be a powerful deterrent to truth. It’s also helping to kill thousands of people during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Most of us believe that we are rational beings who rely on logical, careful consideration to form our opinions and beliefs. However, our brains rely heavily on mental shortcuts, or heuristics, to save cognitive power. Rather than continuously making our brain do the intense work of critical thinking, we have evolved to use these mental shortcuts to skip some information, make associations, and identify patterns without much effort.
One such heuristic is known as confirmation bias, and this is when we use available information to reinforce ideas we already believe to be true. We tend to seek out, notice, accept, and remember information that confirms previously existing beliefs, and we ignore, forget, or dismiss information that is contrary to the same belief. When you have a strong emotional attachment to a belief — perhaps if it is part of your identity, such as a political party or religious belief — your susceptibility to confirmation bias is even more powerful. What psychologists call “motivated reasoning” refers to the fact that we are motivated to defend emotionally held beliefs, even if there is evidence that the belief is wrong. For example, let’s say my favorite band is Interpol, an American rock band from the early 2000’s who put out a great first album, a pretty good second album, and a disappointing third. From then on, they didn’t seem capable of putting out anything of quality. If this is my favorite band, I may only seek out early accolades and ignore evidence of their later fall. My confirmation bias allows me to continue to claim (to myself!) that Interpol is the best rock band.
One reason why social media amplifies this cognitive bias is that people tend to gravitate to virtual spaces that accord with their own beliefs and where we are less likely to encounter beliefs that differ from our own. Humans typically do not like having personal beliefs challenged, and so we do not notice that we are engaging in confirmation bias unless we have the self-awareness to recognize it. In this way, we are in danger of creating an echo chamber of our own making, accepting only information that aligns to what we previously believed. That very echo chamber effect is what created such a shock for me when I saw the TV news network portraying a different telling of the 2016 election than the one I had been essentially surrounded by.
Confirmation bias is a real problem, but I think desirability bias is even worse. While confirmation bias causes me to recognize, see, and accept information that reinforces what I already believe, desirability bias causes me to believe in what I merely wish was true. For example, in his new book Think Again, Wharton professor Adam Grant writes about a professional forecaster who has honed his skills in prediction for decades. As early as 2015, he predicted a Trump victory in the 2016 election and he held that position for many months. However, as the election neared, he switched his forecast to Hillary winning, not because the evidence had changed, but because he couldn’t bear the thought that Trump would actually win.
During the current stage of the COVID-19 global pandemic, we are seeing desirability bias run rampant. Vaccines are emerging, which has given many of us hope for a future normalcy without restrictions and fear of infection. As a population, we no longer want to believe that we are still vulnerable to a deadly virus for which we have no cure. With only 13.3% of the country fully vaccinated, we are still very far from the 75–80% experts predict we will need to achieve herd immunity. So, we begin to see more and more people act in accordance with that desire, regardless of reality.
Miami-Dade County recently experienced a surge in COVID-19 cases which filled hospital ICUs, and Florida has experienced some 32,000 COVID deaths. In a state where the governor has bragged about scant COVID restrictions, the massive influx of college students desperate for a Spring Break party resulted in an state of emergency last week, including a city-wide lockdown and nightly curfew. On one hand, Governor Ron DeSantis, perhaps faced with political pressures that support the denial of COVID cases and deaths, appears to wish away the need to continue being vigilant. Yet, the dearth of restrictions creates a space for unsafe behaviors, especially for those who are desperate to party like they did in pre-covid times. This pent-up desire overrides all evidence to the contrary, even for those who have personally experienced the illness and even death of loved ones, colleagues, or acquaintances. The internal dialogue runs like this: I don’t want to believe that this disease is a risk or that I could play a part in passing it to someone more vulnerable than me, so I am just going to pretend it isn’t a risk and maybe even decide it isn’t real, or is no worse than the flu. Desirability bias can certainly have some hidden motivators that can cause such denial, such as fear of losing one’s job, but in some cases, it is just fatigue and pent-up desire for things to be different. I wish it was different, so I’m going to believe that it is different.
In practice, it is hard to untangle confirmation bias and desirability bias, but I think we can all conclude that this complex of mental shortcuts can result in dangerous outcomes. We are all tired of COVID restrictions and taking precautions, but this is not the time to become complacent and swayed by mere “wishful thinking.” We must collectively keep ourselves in check, even if we are fatigued with the realities of a pandemic. Unfortunately, SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, is going to be with us for some time to come. It is very difficult for us to wrap our heads around the galling 542,000 deaths due to COVID here in the United States. Needless to say, the deaths are real, the illness is real, and we must continue to remain vigilant in the face of it. And once you have your vaccination, there really is some light at the end of the tunnel.
