{"id":32296,"date":"2017-10-19T01:00:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T05:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32296"},"modified":"2017-10-08T09:15:13","modified_gmt":"2017-10-08T13:15:13","slug":"qotd-confirmation-bias-and-anecdata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/10\/19\/qotd-confirmation-bias-and-anecdata\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Confirmation bias and anecdata"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, identify some linguistic thing everyone believes, or can be persuaded to believe, that women do (for this purpose it doesn\u2019t matter whether they really do it, or whether men do it just as much). You could choose something that\u2019s already been defined as a problem (like uptalk or vocal fry), or, more ambitiously, you could go for something no one\u2019s been paying close attention to (like women over-using the word \u2018just\u2019 at work). Pitch a piece on \u2018Why this thing women do with language is damaging to women\u2019 to the editor of just about any publication. It\u2019s a perennially popular formula and there\u2019s always a place for it somewhere.<\/p>\n

You can establish that the thing is a real thing by using anecdata and exploiting confirmation bias<\/a>. \u2018Have you noticed that thing women do?\u2019 you might begin. If the thing is already a clich\u00e9, like uptalk, then you\u2019ll immediately have them nodding; if it\u2019s not then they probably won\u2019t have noticed it, but many of them will think that\u2019s only because they\u2019re not as observant or as keenly attuned to the zeitgeist as you are. Either way, you\u2019re priming them to accept your premise. Then you can follow up with a tedious anecdote involving some everyday scenario your reader can relate to. Like, \u2018the other day at my office, a woman made a presentation where she did X a heck of a lot; my interest was piqued and I started counting Xs, which confirmed that women do X far more than men.\u2019<\/p>\n

Once people have accepted that there\u2019s something to be noticed, they\u2019ll be susceptible to the phenomenon known as \u2018confirmation bias\u2019 \u2014 a tendency to notice things that match your expectations (in this case that would be instances of women doing X), while failing to register counter-examples (women not doing X, or men doing X). Soon, everyone will be sharing your article on Facebook with comments like \u2018This is so true! I\u2019d never noticed women doing X before, but after I read this piece I heard it everywhere!\u2019<\/p>\n

debuk, “How to write a bullshit article about women\u2019s language”, language: a feminist guide<\/em><\/a>, 2015-08-03.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, identify some linguistic thing everyone believes, or can be persuaded to believe, that women do (for this purpose it doesn\u2019t matter whether they really do it, or whether men do it just as much). You could choose something that\u2019s already been defined as a problem (like uptalk or vocal fry), or, more ambitiously, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,41,16],"tags":[1045,39,593,43],"class_list":["post-32296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-quotations","category-science","tag-confirmationbias","tag-junkscience","tag-socialmedia","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8oU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32297,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32296\/revisions\/32297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}