Myside Bias. Confirmation Bias. “The tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.”
It’s a common occurrence. People want to prove they are right, and so they tend to filter any information they see or hear. Sometimes they will totally disregard anything that is contrary to what they already believe.
How sad that this happens when we have decided we don’t like someone. We will only listen to or believe negative things about them. What if we tried to find a positive for every negative? What if we slowly started to realize that the person isn’t as bad as we chose to believe? If that person is someone we don’t personally know, if they happen to be a public figure, then what we think about them has little affect on them. WE feel the consequences of those negative emotions. As the late comic Buddy Hackett so brilliantly stated, “While you’re carrying a grudge, they’re out dancing.”
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