Welcome Back Please take a Learning goals sheet from the side table and paste it to pg 6 of your Journal. Also, please take a popsicle stick from the side table and write your first and last name neatly on both sides. Agenda: Block 2 Block busters Previous lesson take aways Lesson #3: Confirmation and other Biases Reflection:

Lesson #3 Essential Questions How can people have vastly different understandings of the basic facts of a situation? What is confirmation bias and how does it relate to our implicit biases?

Overview This is the first of two lessons that explore the ways in which biases affect news and information—how news is created and reported (by journalists and others) and how we interpret it. The lesson begins with an activity that will help you experience confirmation bias firsthand. Then, you will gain context for their experience by hearing from experts about how confirmation bias operates in all of us. Finally, we set the stage for the ongoing discussion about the challenges of separating fact from fiction by listening to a National Public Radio story about efforts to correct rumors and fake news.

Learning Goals I will be able to define and understand explicit, implicit, and confirmation bias. I will be able to examine why people sometimes maintain their beliefs in the face of information that refutes them.

Confirmation bias in action The term confirmation bias was coined by English psychologist Peter Wason. He devised a test (known as the Wason Rule Discovery Test) to demonstrate that most people do not effectively test their hypotheses (or beliefs). Instead of trying to falsify a hypothesis to test it, people tend to try to confirm it. Lets see it in action in this video. Can you figure out the rule. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKA4w2O61Xo&disable_polyme r=true

Journal question (Pg 6) 3 min What can we conclude from this video about the challenges we face when we try to make sense and judge the different news and information we get from friends, the internet, and social media?

Bias: Its not that simple Bias is a tendency to believe that some people, ideas, etc., are better than others, which often results in treating some people unfairly. 

Explicit Bias Explicit bias refers to attitudes and beliefs (positive or negative) that we consciously or deliberately hold and express about a person or group.

Implicit bias Implicit bias includes attitudes and beliefs (positive or negative) about other people, ideas, issues, or institutions that occur outside of our conscious awareness and control, which affect our opinions and behavior. Everyone has implicit biases—even people who try to remain objective (e.g., judges and journalists)—that they have developed over a lifetime. However, people can work to combat and change these biases.

Confirmation Bias Confirmation bias, or the selective collection of evidence, is our subconscious tendency to seek and interpret information and other evidence in ways that affirm our existing beliefs, ideas, expectations, and/or hypotheses. Therefore, confirmation bias is both affected by and feeds our implicit biases. It can be most entrenched around beliefs and ideas that we are strongly attached to or that provoke a strong emotional response. “I watch Fox News because it has the facts!” “I listen to NPR radio because it has the facts!”

Defining confirmation Bias Paste the transcript to pg 7 of your journal https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/video/defining- confirmation-bias

Discussion questions - 2 min What is confirmation bias and how does it work? (tables 1-2) What strategies did you learn in the “Can You Solve This?” activity that could help offset our tendencies toward confirmation bias? (3-4) How might confirmation bias influence the way people select and respond to news and information? (5-6) How does confirmation bias affect our ability to judge the accuracy of information, whether it be from a news story or something else that we see on the Internet? (7-8-9)

Misinformation is everywhere Confirmation bias is often deeply entrenched in our emotional response to ideas, issues, and beliefs, making it particularly challenging to counteract. Plenty of Internet and social media sources exploit our emotional response (so-called “click bait”). Unfortunately, as we will see in this activity, this kind of viral misinformation can be particularly difficult to correct.

Confronting fake news (2 min) skill = listening http://www.npr.org/2015/12/21/460602085/digital-culture-critic- abandons-fake-on-the-internet-column This interview explores the decision by the Washington Post to discontinue a newspaper segment dedicated to correcting fake news online. As you listen to the story, on pg 6 note words, phrases, or ideas that help to explain why it is so difficult to correct misinformation. Be ready to share ideas after listening to the interview.

2 min table talk What are some of the reasons why people create and share what turns out to be rumor or misinformation? Why do you think these rumors are so hard to stop?

5 min Journaling time (pg 6-7) Choose 1 prompt to respond to: how do you think confirmation bias might apply to the police video  in the last lesson? how do you think confirmation bias might apply to the  “Street Calculus” cartoon from the last lesson. Write about a time when confirmation bias may have affected your response to a particular situation or information.

Extension

3 things you have learned 3-2-1 ticket out What have you learned in this lesson about confirmation bias and how our biases affect the way we respond to news and information. 3 things you have learned 2 questions you have 1 thing you have enjoyed about today’s lesson