Confirmation Bias Phenomenon

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for and favor information that confirms someone's preexisting beliefs and hypotheses. It is a phenomenon that occurs on the daily, and that can lead people to hold strong false beliefs and seek out information that supports those beliefs. This psychological phenomenon can become an issue when it comes to the justice system. We saw an example of this with the Darlie case we studied in class. She was accused of brutally murdering her two children and was put on death row. There were many different opinions of what happened but the point of having a fair trial and a fair jury is evaluating all the evidence in an unbiased view to come to a conclusion of what happened. Unfortunately, confirmation bias played a big role in this case and could have caused biased views before the trial even started. Shortly after the murders when investigators were evaluating the scene, one investigator walked around the crime scene and decided after about 15-20 minutes that Darlie had committed the murders of her sons. This one investigator's opinion after only 15-20 minutes could have had a major influence on every other step of the case. It is human nature to want to find answers, so when others working on the case heard that one investigator's opinion, they may have worked to prove it true because then they have a more clear answer. The community was also pressuring the cops to find you committed the murders so they would feel safe, and so they used that one bias to give the community the answers they wanted. One can only imagine how many people have been falsely convicted because of confirmation bias and in terms of Darlie's situation, we may never know the full truth.