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What is your lens?
Reflect on your personal background and consider its effect on your interpretation of a source.
Essential tips:
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Investigate your lens as a product of your political, socio economic, educational, etc. background.
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Be conscious of why you selected your source and the purpose it serves in your research.
Recognize whether you are trying to defend a specific hypothesis or seek out a holistic understanding of your topic.
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Keep an open mind and acknowledge the legitimacy of diverging perspectives.
Recognize the tendency of readers to place more value in the sources that support rather than disprove their original views.
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Personal Predisposition:
People process information differently based on the circumstances of their upbringing and the communities of thought with which they identify. For instance, a high school student from California will interpret an article about Hurricane Katrina differently than a resident of New Orleans who was present at the time of the event. Because the high school student was young when the event took place and does not live in the city in which it occurred, she will likely receive the information more objectively and with less emotion. While the New Orleans resident has a personal relationship to the incident that will make it difficult to process knowledge impartially, he better understands the context and nuances of the event.
It is important to not only critique the author’s bias when fact checking, but also to acknowledge your own inherent biases - for example, does your agnostic identification affect how you instinctively view a devout Christian? Does belonging to a liberal-leaning family often cause you to automatically reject articles that reflect a conservative view? And even beyond personal bias, you should be aware of the diversity of the people you surround yourself with - are you interacting mostly with middle-class white people and does that possibly make you less understanding of concerns and issues that affect a group of people you have never met?
Confirmation Bias:
This is the tendency that humans have to internalize research findings that support their hypothesis and dismiss conflicting information. They will seek out sources that defend their position and ignore opposing viewpoints, even when confronted with new information and important alternative perspectives. For example, a voter who has already decided their affinity for a certain candidate and endorsed them publicly is likely to disregard information that presents that candidate in a negative light. The reader’s preconceived ideas about the topic contained in any article significantly impacts their perception of the source. Click here to learn how you can avoid succumbing to the confirmation bias.
Reader’s Purpose:
Another important aspect of the reader’s lens is her unconscious purpose. Is the reader of an article about Donald Trump’s travel ban a student conducting research about immigration policy? Are they a government official who will have to release a public response? Or are they just an ordinary citizen browsing daily news? Is the audience reading the source at the time of its publication or years later? Readers must ask themselves these critical questions. The situation in which a person utilizes a source can drastically change her interpretation of the information it contains.
Additional Resources:
Article: Confirmation Bias: 3 Effective (and 3 Ineffective) Cures
Article: Biases- It's important to be aware of yours
