7 Biases That Everyone Has (And How They F*ck Up Your Life)

Say you’re at a party and everyone there loves peanut butter/hates vegemite, and you love vegemite/hate peanut butter.

Imagine your love of vegemite is found out and everyone at the party starts bagging you out and trying to convince you that peanut butter doesn’t taste like horse sh*t because clearly they’re wrong in every aspect of their lives.

“I like vegemite (true), peanut butter is gross (also true)”, “You’re wrong” they all reply. After a while you lose your mind, give in and start agreeing that peanut butter is awesome and vegemite is evil, and as so many people have repeatedly told you dirty lies – you begin to believe them.

This is a phenomenon called the “Bandwagon effect”. Essentially, it’s the tendency to do or believe things because many other people do (or believe) the same thing. Not surprisingly, there is a greater chance of a person believing in something, the more people around them who believe the same thing.

Additionally, people can do or believe these things regardless of the beliefs they already hold, they may even override their original beliefs with new ones. Now, I’m not certain whether Heather was always an anti-vaxxer or not, however, the phenomenon is pretty well illustrated by this article “Confessions of a (Reformed) Natural Mom” from Amber, over at Go Kaleo. You start out with a bit of Googling, find a peer group who all parrot the same ideas and without noticing, you begin to believe them. Because there is no one left in your life to tell you anything different.