Confirmation bias consists of embracing a belief and seeking only the information that supports it, avoiding as much as possible the information that puts it in doubt.
This naturally includes people who come up with ideas that conflict with our ideological framework. In other words, the largest gap in political tribalism (right-left) is not so much due to rational arguments as to this bias.
Not even for money I listen to you
The algorithmic echo chambers of social media, in fact, are not the cause of the increase of the We-Them gap, but it is the reflection: the algorithms adapt like a glove to our confirmation bias. That is to say: they give us what we want, what we need .
And they avoid giving us what we don’t want to hear, what we don’t want to attend to, what annoys us, what annoys us, what could undermine our precious ideological edifice (tall and unstable as a house of cards, really).
So much so that we are even willing to lose the opportunity to win a sum of money as long as we are not exposed to their ideas . Not all, but a significant majority.
Specifically, according to this study , up to two-thirds of people (both liberal and conservative) gave up the possibility of earning extra money in order not to have to listen to the other party. And they didn’t do it because they already knew what others were going to say , but because it bothered them, could create frustration, or would require too much effort.
The dislike was applied to topics such as same-sex marriage, elections, marijuana, climate change, guns, and abortion.
In other words, what a corollary : ideologically committed people are equally motivated to avoid cross-cutting information at the ideological level.
We love ideological bubbles, therefore, also because our brains are not wired to assimilate large numbers of people (and much less who are very different from us).
This is why in the real world, where we are seven billion people, it is so ridiculous to see a person say things like "the worst always happens to me." But it happens, because, in addition to the confirmation bias, we are also crossed by a deep selfish and narcissistic bias , as you can see in the following video: