Imagine this...

You head over to your grandma's place on the weekend for a fun family get-together.

You're having a great time catching up with grandma when she mentions she's struggling with something on her phone.

Of course, you offer to help, and she shows you the issue: she can't remember her app store password to download a new app.

No worries, you guide her through the password reset and app installation process, and all is sorted.

While you're helping her, a familiar stereotype sneaks into your mind: "Older folks just don't get technology."

A few weeks later, while you're at the local park for a morning jog, you take a break and sit down on a bench to catch your breath.

Beside you sits an elderly man who is engrossed in his smartphone.

The same thought pops into your mind: "Ah! Another old man who might be technologically challenged."

As you sit there, you strike up a conversation with some small talk, and eventually, the topic of tech comes up.

You find yourself subtly expecting him to mention some issues with using his smartphone just like your grandma, reinforcing your pre-existing belief.

However, to your surprise, the elderly man's eyes light up with enthusiasm as he starts sharing his vast knowledge and experience in the field of tech and gadgets.

Turns out he is a tech enthusiast. He reveals that he has been an early adopter of technology throughout his life and is particularly passionate about exploring the latest gadgets and innovations.

The biggest surprise comes when he tells you that he even runs a successful Tech Youtube Channel, where he shares his insights and reviews with a growing audience.

As the conversation continues, you realize that he knows more about some technological advancements than you do.

Your pre-existing belief about older individuals being technologically challenged was shattered in that moment. The encounter with this tech-savvy elderly man serves as a powerful reminder of how your judgment was clouded.

It made you form hasty assumptions about the man based on his age, only to find out that he defied the stereotype and is, in fact, an expert in the very field you thought he might struggle with.

In this week’s edition of Mindful Marketing, we’re diving into the Confirmation Bias - How we favour evidence that supports our pre-existing beliefs while ignoring evidence that doesn’t.

🧠 The Psychology of the Confirmation Bias

The term "Confirmation Bias" was coined by English psychologist Peter Wason in the early 1960s.

The dictionary defines confirmation bias as "the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories."

In other words, it is a cognitive bias that uses new information to fit into one's pre-existing worldview.

For example, if you are a dog person, you'll likely search for "are dogs better than cats?" instead of "are cats better than dogs?" on a search engine like Google.

Moreover, the search results will further confirm your beliefs, by showing you websites and articles that favor dogs over cats.

For Example

Consider this scenario: Michael is a die-hard sports fan who passionately supports his favorite basketball team. He firmly believes that his team is the best in the league and has a strong chance of winning the championship this season.

Throughout the season, he follows every game, celebrating the team's victories, and dismissing any losses as mere flukes or bad luck.

Whenever his team wins, Michael enthusiastically shares news articles, social media posts, and statistics that highlight their achievements and dominance on the court.

On the other hand, when his team loses, he tends to blame external factors such as referees' decisions, injuries to key players, or even the weather conditions, rather than accepting that their opponents might have outplayed them.

Michael's confirmation bias leads him to see everything through the lens of supporting his belief in his team's superiority.

He selectively focuses on information that reinforces his positive perception and disregards or rationalizes any evidence that challenges it.

As a result, his judgment is clouded, and he might overlook potential weaknesses in his team or underestimate the strengths of other competitive teams.

This biased perspective impacts how he experiences and interprets the entire basketball season.

🧪 In the Lab

Cognitive psychologist Peter Wason discovered confirmation bias in a class experiment based on the 2-4-6 hypothesis rule (1960).

The same theory was demonstrated by Wason’s Selection Task, otherwise known as the 4-Card Task carried out in 1966. It’s known to be one of the most repeated tests of logical reasoning in psychology.

The aim of the experiment was to surprise students with how easily their thinking could be led astray and lead to illogical and irrational conclusions.

When people are presented with new information, they often seek to validate what they already believe, leading them to cherry-pick evidence or interpret it in a way that aligns with their preconceived notions.

This bias can have significant implications in decision-making, problem-solving, and forming judgments.

To demonstrate this effect, Pines (2006) wrote about a 51-year-old diabetic male going to the emergency department with lower back pain. The patient reported being in severe pain for the seventh day after heavy lifting at work and said he’d been taking high-dose Ibuprofen every 6 hours.

The nurse told the physician:

Since no beds were available, Mr W. was examined in the hall and it was found he had muscle tenderness in his lower back. No rectal or perineal examinations were performed and he was given a new prescription for pain relief.

As the physician was only looking to prove his theory that the man was seeking medication he did not need, rather than objectively diagnose the man’s pain, he missed the problem that required immediate surgery.

In this case, confirmation bias could rest on four claims:

• Biased search: causing the physician to search for information that supported his existing beliefs and ignore what did not.

• Biased favouring: causing the physician to give more weight to information that supported his beliefs, and less to information that did not.

• Biased interpretation: causing the physician to interpret information in a way that confirmed his beliefs, even if it could be interpreted to contradict them.

• Biased recall: causing the physician to only remember the information that supported his beliefs and forget information that did not, or to incorrectly remember the information all together.

💡How it works inside your Buyer’s mind

When your buyers are faced with choices, their decisions are unconsciously swayed by their preconceived beliefs, leading to confirmation bias.

Imagine a potential diner, Sarah, is looking for a place to have dinner with friends.

She has been to TasteBuds multiple times before and has always enjoyed the food and service. Now, she hears about FlavorHaven, a new restaurant that recently opened in the area.

Confirmation Bias comes into play as Sarah starts researching the two restaurants.

When she looks up information about TasteBuds, she actively seeks out positive reviews and comments from previous customers. She recalls the delicious meals she had there and the friendly staff she interacted with.

As Sarah delves deeper, she reads about TasteBuds' specialty dishes, unique ambiance, and the many positive dining experiences people have had.

This reinforces her positive perception of TasteBuds and strengthens her preference for it.

On the other hand, when researching FlavorHaven, Sarah tends to focus more on negative reviews or any criticisms she comes across.

She unconsciously looks for information that confirms her preexisting belief that TasteBuds is the better option.

Even if she finds some positive reviews about FlavorHaven, she may dismiss them as biased or not representative of the overall dining experience.

As a result of Confirmation Bias, Sarah becomes more convinced that TasteBuds is the ideal choice and is less likely to give FlavorHaven a fair chance.

Even if FlavorHaven offers an interesting and diverse menu, a trendy ambiance, and competitive prices, Sarah's selective perception and interpretation of information reinforce her initial inclination towards TasteBuds.

In this scenario, Confirmation Bias may lead Sarah to choose TasteBuds for her dinner plans with friends, even though FlavorHaven could have provided a new and exciting dining experience.

🤑 How to Apply the Confirmation Bias

Alright, so how can you apply the Confirmation Bias right now to boost your sales?

Reinforce your brand image 💪

The entire notion of confirmation bias is that people already have ideas in their head – and they’re difficult to change.

Which means, if you have a strong brand image that people associate with, you simply need to “confirm” this with them when they land on your page.

In the case of Apple, consumers associate it with the highest premium tech gear. By maintaining this idea that “Anything you can do, you can do better” with Apple products is an incredibly simple, yet powerful use of confirmation bias.

Use stereotypes and cliches to your advantage 🔄

We all know German cars are reliable, Japanese cameras are the finest and Columbian coffee is the stuff of kings.

Except none of those stereotypes or cliches are any more true than the other lies we tell ourselves on a daily basis.

The good news is you can use these preconceived ideas to your advantage, thanks to cognitive bias.

When a German car manufacturer tells people their cars are reliable, few of them will question it.

And people looking for the most reliable car on the market will be drawn to German automobiles regardless of how many reliable manufacturers there are out there.

Show customers their money is safe 🤝

When consumers pay for something, they want to know their money is in good hands.

So they’re looking out for reinforcements that tell them they can trust you as a brand.

This is why customer reviews, testimonials, money-back guarantees and lists of your best clients can have such a drastic impact on conversions.

With confirmation bias at work, consumers think “if it works for them, then it’ll work for me” and they’re less protective over their money.

Become your target audience 🎯

Ever wonder why some people identify so strongly with some brands more than others?

It’s because they associate a part of themselves or the person they aspire to be with said brand. If you’ve ever felt yourself saying “This is the company for me!”, there’s every chance your own cognitive bias has been triggered.

Images are incredibly powerful here, literally showing users the kind of person they’ll be with your brand.

Notice the approach of Cotswold – one of the UK’s leading outdoor clothing and equipment retailers.

Costwold goes for images that look more like a rugged fashion brand. there’s far more emphasis on look and style than pitched tents and outdoor stoves, even though it sells many of the same product categories as its competitors.

By mirroring your target audience and the person they consider themselves or aspire to be, you’ll confirm that you’re the brand for them.

Know your audience’s pain points 💡

When people have a problem they want to believe there’s a solution out there for them. This is where the concept of pain points comes from in marketing. Know what bugs your target audience the most and position yourself as the solution.

This works in two stages. First confirmation bias tells users that, yes, they do in fact have the problem you’re talking about.

And, more importantly, it confirms the news they’re hoping for: that there is a solution and you can provide it. Take Planday’s campaign as an example:

Retain your existing customers 👥

One of the most important uses of confirmation bias is retaining customers and turning them into repeat buyers. When someone buys a product, the first thing they want to do is rationalise their purchase. They want to justify their buying choice and this is especially true for the more expensive or significant purchases.

Which means you need to eradicate the risk of buyer remorse that could result in cancelled orders or unhappy customers. The good news is confirmation bias makes it pretty easy to convince your customers that they made the right choice.

You can sweeten the deal further with freebies, add-ons, vouchers and other rewards for their initial purchase. Help them get the best out of your product/service with free guides and tools – e.g.: free Photoshop plugins for creatives.

Once your customers are fully happy with their initial buying choice, it’s time to turn them into repeat buyers and brand advocates. Call them loyal customers, set milestones and rewards for using your product or service.

MailChimp’s famous high five micro-interaction gives users a subtle sense of satisfaction for sending a campaign live. These small touches make a blog difference across the entire platform.

🚫 What Marketers should avoid with the Confirmation Bias

While confirmation bias can work in our favor as marketers, there are elements of the phenomenon that we should always be cognizant of. Not only can it affect how well we perform our jobs, but it can stifle innovation that prevents us from growing and experimenting.

Targeting the Imaginary Audience 👻

In his 2017 article "Your Brain is Lying to You,” Michael Aagaard talks about one of the easiest confirmation bias pitfalls that marketers fall into.

Aagaard says that it’s a marketer’s job to truly understand their target audiences--how they feel, what they want, what their biggest pain points are, etc.

However, we have to do the work to really understand what those feelings, wants, needs, and pain points are.

Oftentimes, marketers assume based on their confirmation bias that certain issues matter to our target audiences--when they actually don’t.

"If we aren’t careful, confirmation bias can get the best of us, and we can end up marketing to an imaginary target audience made up of our own assumptions and biases,” says Aagaard.

As a result, you can miss important marketing elements that are major pain points for your consumers--based on assumptions alone. It’s crucial to actually speak to your target audiences to learn what matters to them and how they find solutions for their problems.

Stifling Marketing Innovation 🛑

Along with missing the mark in targeting our audiences, confirmation bias also stifles marketing creativity, innovation, and testing.

According to Will Burns of Ideasicle, "Confirmation bias is the force we apply to our reality to maintain it, keep it from changing and make us feel better for it.”

Confirmation bias is the small voice in the back of your head that says, "No need to A/B test this. I know which one will perform best.”

Oftentimes, those tests DO prove us wrong and show us that our assumptions aren’t always true. Or the one that tells marketers to only include the positive metrics in their reporting. Those negative metrics may be trying to tell you something!

By attacking confirmation bias head-on, we’ll be better marketers, reach more of our target audiences, and drive better results.

In a Nutshell 🥜

The emotional impact is what leads buyers to focus less on conflicting behaviour and more on brand loyalty, as it’s much easier for our brains to affirm our existing beliefs than go through the decision-making process again.

This opens up a world of opportunity for brands to fall into the buyer’s selective attention and drown out their competitors.

Marketers and businesses can utilize Confirmation Bias to reinforce customers' beliefs and align them with their offerings.

Craft tailored messaging that resonates with your target audience's existing beliefs, fostering a sense of validation and trust.

By understanding and leveraging Confirmation Bias, you can enhance customer satisfaction and strengthen brand loyalty.

So, be mindful of the confirmation bias and use it to forge deeper connections with your audience and build long-lasting brand loyalty.

See you next Thursday,

Razy Shah

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