How listening to music you hate can make you love your life.
You can train yourself to override the kind of bias that keeps you from making good decisions and having a better life.
One of the most annoying things to me is when someone tries to shove their music down my eardrums. I mean, it’s one thing to be at someone’s place, or in their car, and to listen to whatever they happen to have on in the background, but when a friend insists that you’ve “really gotta check this out!” and then makes you sit there and listen deeply to a song you suspect will make you squirm… because it’s pop and you like metal, or it’s country and you like R&B… well, it’s irritating. Because now you have to pretend that you: a) don’t not want to hear it; b) are soaking it in; and c) are somewhat enjoying it. Because, well, they’re sitting right there hanging on your reaction, and you’re not an asshole.
Maybe you can’t relate, but either way…
I am going somewhere with this.
He made me listen to Tyler Childers.
A few weeks ago my cousin came to visit, and he loves country music. I don’t. I like Americana, but country is a whole other thing, and it’s never vibrated at my frequency. Like, I’d never heard of Tyler Childers in my entire life and I was doing just fine.
Anyway, we were driving around my neck of the woods (like… literal woods), and I was showing him the sights, when he plugged his phone into my car and said, “You gotta check this out!”
He put on some Tyler Childers, and I thought the day was going to take a serious downturn, because I was hungover, we hadn’t had breakfast yet, and I really don’t like country music.
But it would’ve been rude for me to come right out and say that, so I pretended that I: a) didn’t not want to hear it; b) was soaking it in; and c) was somewhat enjoying it. And normally, if I was with anyone else, I would’ve pretended right up until the bitter end with an Oscar-worthy performance and never given the song an honest chance. But because it was my cousin, and I love my cousin, I decided that this time it was going to be different. This time, I was going to really open myself up to it.
And when I did, I realized something decision-science-y that I just had to tell you about.
Confirmation bias shows up a lot.
When it comes to music, I like what I like. It’s already decided. And I’ve decided I don’t like country, which means that typically, if you suggest I listen to your favorite country song because it’s really honestly a good song, I’ll disagree with you right off the bat. Without listening to it. Without knowing the facts.
Which means I might miss out on something good.
I might also not. There’s no guarantee that the song you play me is something I’ll grow to love. But if I reject new information for no other reason than that it contradicts what I already believe, then I’ll never know for sure.
This is how ignorance can happen. It’s how confirmation bias impacts our decisions on the regular. If we hold a belief, we are more likely to favor that belief over any contradictory information we hear, even if the contradictory information is true, and even if our beliefs are false. (This is what confirmation bias is.)
Someone might suggest a RomCom, but we don’t give it a shot because we’ve decided we hate RomComs. Someone might get us to try their favorite tofu dish, but we won’t because we’ve decided we hate tofu. This happens every day.
Also every day, people believe that having only a 401K is enough of an investment strategy when there’s good evidence to suggest this isn’t the case. Every day someone is presented facts that vaccines don’t cause autism, but because those facts contradict what they already believe, they decide the facts must be wrong. Just like that, misinformation spreads because good information doesn’t align with what people have already decided to believe.
This is how confirmation bias can ruin your life.
You should train yourself to override confirmation bias.
Once, millions of people believed in their hearts that an up-and-coming political leader was going to save them, that he was a man of upstanding character, despite facts regarding his unsavory disposition, his self-serving hunger for power, his penchant for sociopathic violence. They supported his leadership because they firmly believed he was the answer to their problems, even though the evidence suggested he was a problem - because their beliefs were more important than truth.
Confirmation bias allows brutal dictators to rise to power.
I once worked with leaders at a tech company who believed that selling a specific product would make them rich. I mentioned that their belief wasn’t supported by data, but they rejected my warnings. Why consider new information when they believed in their gut they were right. The product was a huge failure.
Confirmation bias costs businesses money.
I once dated a guy who thought I didn’t love him. He believed I was cold-hearted and incapable of love - which I wasn’t. I paraded evidence in front of him to prove he was wrong, but because my evidence contradicted what he already believed, he wouldn’t have it.
Confirmation bias deteriorates relationships.
Do we really need to run into the same walls over and over? Shouldn’t we know better?
The more you practice opening yourself up to information you’re likely to dismiss - and the more you train yourself to think through that information objectively - the more likely you’ll be to catch yourself before confirmation bias happens to you.
Listening to music you hate might just be a great way to do this.
Give it a shot.
The better you get at overriding your brain’s natural tendency for this bias, the better your decisions will be, and the better your life, community, your world can be. Travis Childers isn’t my new favorite musician, but I am surprised by how much I appreciate him. If I hadn’t practiced suspending belief long enough to listen, I never would have known this.
If you don’t practice hearing out information that doesn’t align with what you already believe, you can shut yourself off from information critical to good decison-making.
So… pick a song you think you’ll hate, maybe because it’s metal when you like pop, or it’s R&B when you like alternative. And just listen. Pay attention. Soak it in and figure it out.
And if you decide you don’t like it, that’s fine. This isn’t about discovering new music; it’s about training your brain to not automatically reject new information that doesn’t align with your pre-existing beliefs. It’s about practicing being uncomfortable as new data seeps into your brain.
If you practice this, you’ll more likely be open to all sorts of new and surprising information. Your decisions will get better. And you might just grow to love your life.
I’m not eating tofu. Stop asking.