‘Want to know how confirmation bias and bullying relate? They relate a lot more than most would think. Here are all the details you need to know.
Confirmation bias and bullying go hand in hand. When bullies spread rumors and lies to smear you, they have ways of making the lies look truthful. That’s what confirmation bias is, it’s when people go along with what makes lies look like the truth, even when they know it’s wrong.
Therefore, in this post, you will learn all about confirmation bias and bullying so that you can recognize it when you see it.
Once you learn all about this game-changing information, you will know what to look for and you will use what you learned to your advantage.
This post is all about confirmation bias and bullying so that you can use it as a weapon to defend yourself.
Confirmation bias and bullying
People will believe what they want to believe. Therefore, no amount of solid evidence will convince them if they refuse to believe it.
Sadly, the only way confirmation bias has anything to do with facts is when they match the belief. If cold, hard facts don’t match the person’s beliefs, chances are they’ll only deny it and look elsewhere for evidence that contradicts them.
Understand that your bullies do the same when it comes to you. They seek to justify and explain away their cruelty and abuse.
Moreover, they find arguments that support their opinions of you. And this only creates bigger problems for you.
What is confirmation bias?
It’s the tendency to recall, interpret, and favor information in a way that confirms a pre-existing belief.
In other words, if there’s evidence that debunks a person’s belief, that person is likely to reject it. Then they’ll search for evidence that confirms what they believe.
Therefore, there’s where the bias comes in. Hence, it is confirmation bias.
Bullies will find evidence to back up their lies, even if they must invent it themselves.
Any time bullies disregard information that contradicts their beliefs, they usually know what they’re doing. However, they don’t care.
All they care about is making you look bad to everyone else.
For instance, your bullies get caught beating the crap out of you. And later, they are standing tall before a member of authority.
They don’t want to face any accountability for abusing you. So, they tell the person in authority that there’s a good reason why they beat you up.
Therefore, they make up a cockamamie excuse for their brutality. They blame you, saying that you instigated the fight.
They tell the staff member that you started it by spreading a rumor that could cost them their reputations. So, they just had to teach you a lesson.
Confirmation Bias and Bullying:
CB is another tactic in the bully’s playbook.
Your bullies will have this type of bias when they desperately search for evidence that supports their pre-existing beliefs of you. They will be selective in their stories about you.
They’ll spin the story until it best fits what they want to believe. Therefore, there are good reasons why you should never try to prove yourself to bullies or anyone else. Don’t waste your time trying to clear up any rumors.
Instead, just let them think what they want because they’re going to do that anyway.
Bullies Rarely tell boldface Lies.
Bullies have been lying and telling half-truths for so long that they have it down to an art. Most bullies rarely tell blatant falsehoods. Why? Because the boldface lies are easiest to figure out.
Bullies deceive by telling half-truths and adding their own spin. Therefore, your bullies will deceive by either adding to or taking away from the truth. In other words, they use the “Tiny Grain of Truth Technique.”
This is what facilitates confirmation bias. Here’s how they do it.
Bullies use that tiny grain of truth as a starting point any time they decide to defame you to others. If you are a bully, the beauty of this is that others can mistake it for the whole truth.
With the smallest grain of truth to a rumor, the rumor can be spun, twisted, and completely taken out of context. This not only benefits your bullies, but it causes more damage to you.
Therefore, no matter how much a story has been changed and rearranged, that grain of truth is all your bullies need to make the story believable to others.
Confirmation Bias and Bullying:
No wonder bullies are such believable liars!
As I have said a million times before, bullies are very practiced and convincing liars. This is one of the ways they make their lies so convincing.
Again, they rarely tell straight up lies, they only take one tiny grain of truth and embellish on it. This is one of the bully’s most powerful deception tactics.
They Use Distortions and Exaggerations
It’s the same thing, really. Bullies either blow it up, water it down, or heavily distort facts. They conveniently take things out of context.
For example, your bullies begin to provoke you. They keep it up until you get fed up and, in a low but angry growl, tell them to buzz off.
Your bullies then tell everyone else about the altercation, making sure to blow it up, and make it bigger than it was.
They tell others that you started the confrontation. Therefore, they distort it. The truth is that there was a confrontation between you and your bullies.
However, they distort it by claiming that you started it when they were the ones who provoked you. They then exaggerate what happened by telling others that you yelled at them and cursed them out.
Also, they leave out the part where they kept provoking and pushing you and didn’t stop until you got tired of the bullshit and told them to buzz off.
Confirmation Bias and Bullying:
They cherry-pick different parts of the story.
Understand this right now. Bullies do this deliberately. They distort anything to shoehorn it and make it fit their narrative.
Bullies will even cherry-pick different parts of the truth. In other words, they select the parts that fit their beliefs and add their own spin to it.
Then, they’ll glue the pieces together to create their own version of the truth and make it sound believable. Therefore, it now fits the bullies’ existing beliefs.
This is the same thing the media does.
Think about it. The media does this all the time. For instance, a witness may pull out their phone and film something terrible that is happening right before their eyes. They then send it to a news station to be broadcasted.
When the new media gets a hold of the film, they will edit out anything that doesn’t fit their narrative. They’ll only show the bits and pieces of the film that best fits the story they wish to put out.
If they get an audio recording, they will also edit it and create soundbites. Therefore, they’ll only broadcast snippets of the recording that best fits the story they want to tell the public.
It’s all the same.
Confirmation Bias and Bullying:
Everyone is capable of confirmation bias.
Granted, each one of us looks at things from our own perspective, therefore, we all have a tiny bit of confirmation bias in us because everyone looks at the world differently.
However, bullies will take this to a whole different level. They will twist, distort, embellish, and lie to get the answers they desire.
And if it means denying solid evidence- any solid, concrete evidence which goes to your favor, then that is what they’ll do.
Understand that the reason bullies do this is to discredit you and skew the perspectives of others. This is all designed to create prejudicial and negative views of and attitudes about you.
It’s so important that you understand the mindsets of bullies, their tactics, and their intentions behind such tactics. Moreover, it’s also important that these tactics have names and that you know those names and how to describe them.
Only then will you be better able to speak out about them and be your own advocate.
People who believe the lies are showing you who you should cut out of your life.
Unfortunately, there will be many people who fall for your bullies’ lies. Some, may even be those you think are your friends.
However, look at it this way. These people are showing you their true colors. They’re showing you exactly who you should cut ties with.
The people who matter will believe you. The ones who don’t believe you don’t matter. Therefore, walk away from anyone who believes any lies and rumors about you. And don’t look back!
It’s the smartest way to handle fake friends who can’t wait to believe the worst of you.
This post is all about confirmation bias and bullying so that you can know what’s happening and call it out when it happens to you.
Related posts you’ll enjoy:
1. Bullied for Being Smart? Here are 5 Positive Ways to Look at It
2. The Horns Effect: Bully-Induced Bias Against Victims of Bullying