Presentation and Confirmation Bias

I think the topics my group is covering are actually very eye opening. I feel as though we as a society all know about these things, but we don't know terms or the science behind it, or we experience these things but don't even realize it's a legitimate phenomenon. 

The topic I chose to cover for my groups presentation is Confirmation Bias. Confirmation Bias is a dangerously common thing, and countless people are guilty of acting in such a sense. Confirmation Bias is defined as the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. In english, this basically means that we tend to lean towards news and/or news sources that reinforce something that we already believe to be true. Along with this, we choose to ignore the news that goes against our views, perhaps by pinning it out to be fake news, when in reality, it most likely isn't. 

I actually have a PERFECT example. This week, I was accepted to be a student on Semester at Sea for the Spring 2020 semester. This voyage is my dream, and i'll literally be able to practice exactly what I want to do for a living, because I will be taking feature writing, which means i'll be able to write stories in countries about other cultures and people, and give them a spotlight in the world. While I am only seeing the absolute positives to this situation, and am only capable of finding good reviews and what not about SAS, no matter how hard I try to find some sort of negative. Yet, when my mom decided to research SAS, she immediately was capable of finding news about very story sea experiences and a few accidental deaths, most of which dating back to over 10 years ago. While I understand there are dangers about going abroad, something like this is not going to taint me from wanting to go, as I know how to handle myself abroad. Regardless, this is a prime example of confirmation bias. Because of how desperate I am to go on SAS, I'll always lean towards the positive news. But, because my mom is rather against it, she'll lean and search for articles and reinforce her statement that it's dangerous.