Even if you try to seek out new opinions, sometimes you’ll still believe what you want to believe, regardless of evidence. We’re all human, after all.
These are our cognitive biases, which are sometimes paired with stubbornness and a strong desire to be right at all times.
Have you ever met someone and decided you loved them or hated them immediately? If you’ve only known them for a few minutes, how confident can you be about their personality?
Regardless of how inaccurate our feelings are, we shape our knowledge of the world with assumptions and past experiences. It helps us create a full picture of something or someone, which can be good and bad. Stereotypes are born from this, and we often rely on stereotypes to process information efficiently.
This is infographic is useful if you’re interested in objectively processing why your brain responds the way it does, but it’s probably not as useful when you meet someone and dislike them because they remind you of an ex who broke your heart. This cognitive bias codex will help you learn your own biases and avoid unnecessarily awkward interactions in the future. Read more about how the brain retains information here.