Cognitive Biases In Racism

Cognitive biases are described as errors in one’s judgements caused by the filtering of information through his/her personal preferences, memories, and experiences. Correspondingly, racism is described as a prejudice or discrimination against someone of a different race because of one’s personal beliefs and preferences. In this paper, I will be discussing two specific cognitive biases that I believe play the biggest role in the development of racism: the confirmation bias and the availability heuristic. I want to explicitly state that there are many other aspects that play into racism, but I personally believe that these biases are the two most prevalent and obvious factors in this specific prejudice. After I’ve explained the two biases, I will begin to show the correlation between the biases and racism. I will use examples from my personal life to
The two cognitive biases that I will be discussing in this paper are the confirmation bias and the availability heuristic. The first bias I will be discussing is the confirmation bias. The confirmation bias is described as the tendency for a person to search for and interpret information in such a way that it will confirm their previously existing beliefs. As you can see, this could definitely cause issues when it comes to impartial and sound reasoning in a person’s judgement. An example of this bias would be me writing this paper, but only looking for facts and giving personal opinions that support my argument, while also leaving out any type of information that opposes my viewpoint or argument. A way for me to avoid falling ill to this bias, would be for me to mention these conflicting arguments in this paper and point out why I think they are unsound. Being aware and open to both sides of an issue, instead of just the side you agree with, is the number one way to prevent yourself from falling ill to this