Is it a sign?
I made a stellar pizza the other night. It was restaurant quality. The crust was chewy and crispy. The cheese was melty. The sauce was perfect. We have a pizza stone, and our oven gets pretty hot, but one thing that would make the pizza better, is a pizza oven. As we were eating the pizza, I commented to my husband that I wished we had an outdoor portable pizza oven. I didn’t research one or take it any further, simply made the comment. The conversation ended there.
The next day, as I was scrolling Instagram, an ad for an outdoor portable pizza oven appeared. Now, I could interpret this as a sign that I’m supposed to now get one of these pizza ovens. Heck, it could be a sign! I made a great pizza, we all agreed it was great and could only be improved by the oven, and voilà! There’s the oven!
But instead, I’m thoroughly creeped out. I think this is a better example of confirmation bias than of a sign, and confirmation bias is exactly what I want you to think about now when any ad pops up in any social media or search platform you use.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to find information that supports a position or idea. You might notice that when you suddenly are in the market for a car and you decide you like a particular one, you will begin to see that car everywhere. Confirmation bias also appears to help us support our own political and world views, make interpretations of people in our lives, or cherry-pick statistics to support a hypothesis. Confirmation bias is a bias we all face and must consciously be aware of. But, and here’s a big but, we’re also facing other forces in the confirmation bias game: advertising and the algorithm.
When the pizza oven ad first popped up, I might think it’s confirmation bias. But, every time I click on an ad, I am giving the social media platform information about things I want to know about. If I click on the ad for the pizza oven, I am going to get more ads for pizza ovens. I am not necessarily, even if subconsciously, searching out this information on my own through confirmation bias – it is being planted right in front of me by the algorithm. Anything you show interest in on social media will cue the algorithm (the search/suggestion engine) to show you more like that thing. This happens with everything – products, points of view, parenting hacks, money advice, you name it.
Not only do you want to be aware of your own confirmation bias – the seeking of information to support an idea – but you also want to keep an eye out for what might be planted in your way to encourage your behavior in some direction. Don’t get fooled (see what I did there? ;)) by confirmation bias, or the additional forces swaying your behavior. If you’re thinking something might be a sign or a meaningful coincidence, think again.