From New Scientist magazine:

*The link probably won't work, because I had to log in to read it. Excellent magazine, BTW.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730340-300-7-mind-slips-that-cause-catastrophe-and-how-we-can-avoid-them/

"Most of us have trouble believing evidence that contradicts our preconceptions. Psychologists call this confirmation bias.

Where does it come from? Michael Frank, a neuroscientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, says the bias may have a physical basis in the neurotransmitter dopamine, which acts as a reward signal in the brain. Acting on the prefrontal cortex, it inclines us to ignore evidence that challenges long-held views, keeping us from having to constantly revise the mental shorthand we use to understand the world. In another part of the brain, the striatum, dopamine has the opposite effect: its level spikes in response to novel information, and that makes us more likely to be open to these details.

. . . . .some people have a gene that causes dopamine to be broken down more quickly in the striatum. That means they get a bigger dopamine hit from new facts, rendering them less susceptible to confirmation bias."

end quote

This could explain why most people will keep the religion they were born into. But here WE all are, on exmormon.org, so we must be a little different.

I definitely think I get a 'hit' from new information, especially stuff that challenges my assumptions. In my field, I've always looked for new ways of doing things, instead of doing things the traditional way.

How about the rest of you? Was it just the church where you challenged the status quo, or are you early adapters or questioners in other ways?

If you want a glimpse into how we confirm or fight our learned biases, start a discussion into what 'ought' be done with our dead. The human corpse, garbage or future resurrected being?

I think possibly the only thing I was hard-wired for was to want a normal life. From probably middle school age, I always wished that the church wasn't really true and that there was a way to know that.

I was a weirdo and I knew it. And I hated being a weirdo. The only redeeming thing was that I had a good group of other weirdos to hang out with, even though even most of them had parents who let them be a little normal and weren't so over the top. But these days they don't even have much for the youth in the church.

But I always thought that I could never NOT believe the church was true. Even if something unthinkable should happen, like if I found out Joseph Smith had 30 wives, or that he gave conflicting versions of the first vision, or that he translated the BOM with a rock in his hat or that the temple was just reworked masonic rituals or something perposterous like that, I'd still be afraid to believe it because I wouldn't know if it was Satan trying to trick me.

But I was wrong. It was such a relief to find out that I could know the church was a fraud 100 times more strongly than I ever believed that it was true. That I could have no fear whatsoever that I was wrong and it was a Satanic trick. So yeah, maybe I did lack the confirmation bias gene.

Interesting. I definitely get a kick out of new information, especially if it's challenging. That's what got me into researching Mormonism - it's like a parallel universe where things that seem patently, obviously absurd are accepted as fact. Really challenges my own views of what's "obviously true".

But I don't think that makes me immune from confirmation bias - I've got plenty! I'm as much a victim of my own brain as anyone.

If you add massive amounts of cradle to grave social and societal conditioning to the "brain brew", you will get a population thoroughly trapped in confirmation bias. This conditioning will color everything the individual is exposed to, and almost always will operate to increase confirmation bias and further strengthen conditioning.

The individual, thus conditioned, will be so uncomfortable with any concept that seems to threaten their fixed foundation of "reality", "truth", etc. which the individual is invested in, that the individual will often be, not just a little uncomfortable when exposed to novelty or concepts outside the comfortable conditioned paradigms, but a LOT uncomfortable, to the point where they become emotionally involved, angry, and belligerent toward the source of the stress-inducing concept.

Pity poor Galileo...

Yes, and when you add the belief that these uncomfortable feelings mean the ideas are from Satan, you have a population of people who are scared to death to think outside the box.

yeah man, that's one of the heaviest conditioning memes out there, whoooh! De Debbil!!!

This relates to the problem of people who cite studies with results that exist in percentages as if they have a blanket application to everyone, or who extrapolate from their own experience and generalize to others. Other people can experience the same event differently.

Like if a person is wired for jealousy, or to be sexually adventurous probably has a lot to do with whether they would want an open or a closed marriage.

And if a study came along and found that 40% of closed marriages end in divorce but 60% of open marriages end in divorce. You would have people claiming the study as proof that traditional marriage is good and hippie marriage is bad, because clearly traditional marriage won by 20 percentage points.

But it could be that the right two people, with a low threshold for jealousy, would have a much better chance in an open marriage.

We use these studies as if they show that people are monolithic when in fact we are full of exceptions and individual differences.