Speaker 1: 1:41

Shift work can be brutal, but it doesn't have to be. Welcome to a healthy shift. My name is Roger Sutherland, certified nutritionist, veteran law enforcement officer and 24-7 shift worker for almost four decades. Through this podcast, I aim to educate shift workers using evidence-based methods, to not only survive the rigours of shift work but thrive. My goal is to empower shift workers to improve their health and wellbeing so they have more energy to do the things they love. Enjoy today's show and welcome back to a Healthy Shift podcast. I'm your host, roger Sutherland, and welcome to the show, because it's just such a privilege to have you here and listening to us.

Speaker 1: 2:30

Today I'm going to talk about something that's a little bit different. I know I say the podcast is a healthy shift and a lot of you associate it with shift work, and that's really important that you do to me personally, but it's also about making a healthy shift in your life to go from a poor place to one where you're thriving in whatever it is that you're doing in your life, and that's one that I want to make sure that I cover as well, because when the name for a healthy shift came up, it had so many different meanings. One is a healthy shift, as in, let's go and do shift work and have a healthy shift, and the other one is to go from a poor place to a good one, making a healthy shift in whatever you do in life, and that's important. Now, today, I want to talk about something that's really shaping our world in ways that many of us don't even realize, and today may very well be a big light bulb moment for you, or it'll be something that you'll have suspected or thought about, but you didn't realize until you hear this, and it will go in deep. And if it does go in deep, then I'm talking to you and it's important. And what we're talking about today is confirmation bias. Now, that might sound like a fancy psychological term, but I promise you this is something that you are absolutely exposed to every single day, especially when we're scrolling through social media, and we all are scrolling through social media today at a monotonous rate, and the reality is, if we're not careful and you will have already noticed this it's dividing us in ways that are catastrophic for our society and also our relationships and even our workplaces. Think about it. When you get to the end of this podcast, you'll know what I'm talking about is right.

Speaker 1: 4:26

So first of all, let's break it down. What is confirmation bias? And I'll start with, quite simply, confirmation bias is the tendency to look for, to believe and share information that already supports what we think Now. Information that already supports what we think Now. Bear with me. If you have a strong opinion about something, your brain naturally wants to find evidence that backs you up on what your thoughts are, and it wants to ignore or dismiss anything that challenges you, and that's called cognitive dissonance. Now, it is human nature. It makes us feel safe and it gives us certainty and it stops us from doing uncomfortable work of questioning ourselves because we are just continually reaffirming our own beliefs. Now, that used to just mean that we argued over the dinner table, and we did. I think it's blue, you might think it's dark blue, you might think it's black table, and we did. I think it's blue, you might think it's dark blue, you might think it's black, or maybe we just disagreed with a neighbor over something. But today it is completely different. It's a whole new ballgame now, and this is all because of social media, and it is so.

Speaker 1: 5:34

How did social media supercharge it? So social media platforms are designed and make no secret of this. You know this. They're designed to keep you on them for as long as possible. And if you think about it, have a think about how much time you sit and waste scrolling on social media. You've got to remember you're falling into their exact business model, because the more time you spend scrolling, the more they're going to keep showing you, the more they're going to keep refreshing the page, the more they're going to put news, the more they're going to keep pushing you with the agenda that you want to follow and the more money they're making. It's that simple. And how do they keep you there? They're learning everything about you what you click on, what you like, what you comment on, even how long you hover over a post before you actually move on. So you don't even have to engage with it. You just look at it and because you're looking at a particular post for a while and move on, it will continually show you stuff along those lines and then the algorithm kicks in and it feeds you more of what you've shown interest in. Now it doesn't care if it's true, make no bones about it. It doesn't care if it's good for you. All it wants to do is keep you on the platform and keep you engaged for the advertising dollar. It's that simple.

Speaker 1: 6:51

So if you watch a video about one side of an issue, you are suddenly going to start to see 10 more videos that agree with it, and before you know it, you're in an echo chamber where everyone thinks the same way as you do, and that is confirmation bias on steroids. So why is this dangerous? Well, here's the real danger. When we're only seeing one side of the story, it becomes really easy to believe that our view is the only correct one. And then we start thinking well, if everyone online agrees with me, so how can anyone possibly think differently? And then, when we do meet someone who sees it differently, it doesn't just feel like a disagreement anymore, but it starts to feel like a personal attack, and this is where the real division begins. People stop listening, they stop debating respectfully, and what they do is they either attack or they retreat to their corners, and this is a massive problem.

Speaker 1: 7:49

Now I'm going to give you a classic example of this. When I give you this example, you're going to go oh yeah, that's right, let's talk about COVID for a minute, because COVID was just the absolute classic for this, and I also firmly believe that COVID started a lot of it, as well as a problem, because a lot of this became a lot more pertinent in 2020. Because during the labelled pandemic, you could not scroll for five minutes without being fed endless posts about vaccines, about lockdowns, about government policies or the conspiracy theories, and what you saw depended entirely on what you'd clicked on before, because if you clicked on posts that supported the lockdowns, yep, you saw more of that, but if you clicked on posts questioning vaccines, you saw a lot more of that as well. And before long, people weren't even living in the same reality anymore. Families were divided, friends fought and stopped talking, even workplaces turned toxic because people were terrified to bring up the subject full stop. And to this day, many people still avoid conversations around COVID altogether because it is literally just so polarizing, and that's the lasting damage that confirmation bias can cause.

Speaker 1: 9:15

Now I want to use another example, and a recent one, because this one's been very impactful on me personally, and that's the Charlie Kirk murder. Because, more recently, the Charlie Kirk murder is just one of the greatest examples since COVID. Within hours, hours, minutes of this happening, social media was flooded with hot takes, accusations, blame and footage pulled from every angle, with everyone breaking down every tiny little aspect of it, and we were all exposed to a huge amount of vision of exactly what occurred, what we were being shown, and it was horrific to watch as a human regardless of who charlie kirk was or what he did or how that that happened in front of a whole what 3,000 uni students live, and not only that, but his wife and two children as well. This is from him having debate and conversation live, giving people the opportunity to talk to him live.

Speaker 1: 10:16

Now, people didn't wait for facts. They literally just jumped straight to whatever narrative fit their existing belief in relation to Charlie Kirk. Whether they agreed or whether they didn't Left right whatever, whatever your belief is, I don't care, I really don't. The point that I'm making here is have a think about which way you went in relation to it and then how strong you became in relation to that point. And then what happened was the social media algorithms kept feeding more and more and more of the same. It just reinforced your position and hardened your view in relation to your confirmation bias.

Speaker 1: 10:57

So by the time the so-called real facts emerged, most people had already made up their minds. What had occurred emerged. Most people had already made up their minds what had occurred. Some didn't even want to hear the truth anymore because that just didn't line up with their story that they'd been sold. And then, when the one side was trying to tell the other one, it was straight out cognitive dissonance, and the same going back the other way as well. It didn't matter. The truth lies halfway between the two, somewhere I don't know. Do I know what the truth is? No, I'm just roged down here in Melbourne. I haven't got a clue. Do I have my ideas? Yes, I do. Does it mean that make them right? No, is it an opinion? Yes, is my opinion wrong? No, it's not, because everybody's opinion is correct to them. You don't have to agree with it, but it's still their opinion and it's correct. And that is the power and the danger of confirmation bias. In today's world, it is super danger. So here's the bigger picture.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Confirmation bias isn't just dividing us on politics and pandemics. It's actually spilling into every single part of our life. You as a human, and listening to this, are becoming more and more and more polarized. We are less willing to listen. We're more likely to demonize people who actually think differently to us, and social media is fueling this every step of the way. Now, this isn't just unhealthy for us individuals, it's actually catastrophic for society, because when we lose the ability to have a respectful disagreement, we lose the ability to actually solve problems together.

Speaker 1: 12:36

It's a natural reaction that when someone argues with you to fight back and push back, natural no one stands here and yells at another person with their opinion. The other person goes oh yeah, no, no, you're right. Well, they don't do they. They tend to push back from their other side or they shut up and walk away. You're not going to change somebody else's mind on it. So what can we do about this? What is there that we can actually do about it? Well, first of all, this podcast brings awareness to it, so that you're aware of how you're getting sucked into this vortex of confirmation bias, because when you're scrolling, I want you to stop and ask yourself this why am I seeing this? Is this being fed to me because it's true, or is it because the algorithm thinks it will keep me hooked on this platform? Second, I want you to challenge yourself and go and follow the other side of the argument and hear me out on this. You might not agree with it and you don't have to agree with it, but at least you will have a more balanced view. Go and follow people and listen to people from the other side. Follow people who you completely disagree with.

Speaker 1: 13:46

When I studied nutrition and was learning how to break down and read papers research papers I was taught that if it said that something is black, to go in and read the paper, that it is white and let the paper convince you that it is black. That is the way to critically analyze a paper. To go in with the opposite of what the paper's trying to tell you and let the paper argue to you what it is that you actually want to, what the paper's trying to achieve. See if the paper convinces you, because if the paper doesn't convince you, then it's not worth it. So this is a really good one, and remember this you don't have to agree with it, but at least you've got a more balanced view.

Speaker 1: 14:31

And third and this is one of the hardest ones turn the bloody thing off, because sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is just close the app, turn off the phone and go out and talk to real people in the real world. Healthily. Go and have a look around outside you, in your environment. Get your head out of your phone and go down to the supermarket and engage with the checkout operators and the storekeepers and the people that are down at the shops there. Go and talk to them and just have chats about anything other than what's going on in the media and watch how beautiful the actual world is the real world Because in the real world, conversations aren't cut down to a 30-second clip.

Speaker 1: 15:16

That's designed to make you angry. They're messy, they're nuanced and they actually require empathy from both sides, and that is literally what we are missing out on online. You're being fed bang. Here's 30 seconds to hold your attention and you get sucked in by it every time. Have a think about that, because that's what it's doing. It's designed to do that. It's designed to keep you on the platform. I've got clients that are begging me. They don't know what to do because the phone holds them like it's got some hold over them.

Speaker 1: 15:46

That's confirmation bias, again, because you're trying to find and just get confirmation of your own thinking so that you feel better about what you're doing, and it's just not working. Having conversations with real people hand your phone to a person while you're having a conversation with them. Show them you've got my undivided attention, and that's where you have a really good conversation and just have a chat about things. You don't have to agree with the person's opinion, it's their opinion. As soon as you get to the place where you realize that their opinion is not wrong it's just that you don't agree with it the world becomes a better place all around that you don't agree with it, the world becomes a better place all around. So let's wrap this up as we move through this world, where information just comes at us faster than ever, we do have to remember this that not everything that you are seeing is the truth and not everything that we believe is actual fact and confirmation bias is part of being human, but when it's supercharged by social media, it can actually divide us in ways that are catastrophic, and I flagged those earlier. So my advice to you is to be critical and question what you are seeing. Is it right, is it not? Would I be better off not seeing that, just turning it off? Challenge your own beliefs and, most importantly, don't let those social media algorithms do your thinking for you.

Speaker 1: 17:14

So that's it for today's episode of a Healthy Shift podcast. I know it's heavy, but it's something that we need to hear. Because it is. It's really, really important that we identify these things. Because it is. It's really really important that we identify these things because once we identify them, then we can address them, we can acknowledge them, we can mindfully recognize them and we can do something about it. So that's it for today's episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this helpful, do me a favor and share it. Would you Someone who spends a little bit less time on their phone? It might just help them to step back. Okay, thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so you get notified whenever a new episode is released. It would also be ever so helpful if you could leave a rating and review on the app you're currently listening on. If you want to know more about me or work with me, you can go to ahealthyshiftcom. I'll catch you on the next one.