Part Ⅰ. Dissecting the Structure of Distrust (Episodes 1-5)

① Distrust is Learned, Not Felt

② The Emergence of a Confirmation Bias Society

③ Policies as Risk Variables, Not Stabilizers

④ Five Signs of a Distrustful Society

⑤ The Solution: Managing Distrust, Not Restoring Trust

The belief that increasing facts would correct judgments has long been accepted as a given premise. The expectation is that when sufficient information is provided and counterarguments are presented, people will arrive at more rational conclusions.

However, society today is moving in the opposite direction of this expectation. While facts abound, judgments do not change. Instead, they become even more entrenched.

This phenomenon is often explained by individuals' cognitive limitations, namely confirmation bias.

The explanation is that people only accept information that reinforces their existing beliefs, while ignoring or devaluing contradictory facts. However, this explanation alone is insufficient to fully account for the current situation.

This is because confirmation bias is operating not just as an individual tendency, but as a cognitive structure for society as a whole.

The most significant characteristic of a confirmation bias society is asymmetry in interpretation.

When a policy or system succeeds, that success is explained as being due to 'special conditions,' 'coincidence,' or 'temporary effects.' Conversely, when it fails, that failure is immediately interpreted as evidence of structural flaws.

Success becomes the exception, and failure becomes the rule.

In this society, judgments are not corrected through success, but are reinforced through failure.

This asymmetrical interpretation is not accidental. It is the result of learning developed through repeated experiences.

The more unexplained failures accumulate, the more people trust failure over success. This is because failure confirms what they already know, while success requires the burden of revising existing perceptions.

The era of information overload further reinforces this tendency.

New information is constantly supplied, but the conditions necessary for that information to change judgments are disappearing. If there is no record of why a certain judgment was correct or why other options were excluded, information is used solely as material for conviction, not as an accumulation of facts.

In this process, facts become tools to justify conclusions rather than starting points for discussion.

Completely different interpretations become possible for the same facts, and each interpretation selectively emphasizes aspects that are favorable to itself. Confirmation bias is no longer an error, but functions like a rational defense strategy.

In a confirmation bias society, the language of persuasion loses its power.

Presenting new facts reinforces existing positions rather than changing judgments. Rebuttals function not as mechanisms to deepen discussion, but as signals to identify one's camp.

At this point, society passes a critical turning point.

As the structure in which judgments are corrected by facts collapses, the possibility of public consensus also weakens. Different groups no longer debate on the same criteria. Instead, they accumulate only the information needed to maintain their own convictions.

When confirmation bias becomes a societal structure, the problem goes beyond simple misunderstanding. Society loses the opportunity to correct its failures.

This is because correction is a process of admitting that existing judgments were wrong. Therefore, this becomes the greatest cost paid by a confirmation bias society.

This structure is further reinforced as it intertwines with distrust.

Learned distrust makes people suspicious of new explanations, and that suspicion, in turn, reinforces existing perceptions. In this way, distrust and confirmation bias support each other, forming a closed cognitive structure.

The danger of a confirmation bias society is not the existence of extreme opinions.

The more fatal problem is that society loses the mechanisms to scrutinize its own judgments. A society that does not change its judgments will ultimately repeat its failures.

Confirmation bias is not an individual weakness, but a learned rational attitude in a society that lacks explanations and records. When this attitude solidifies into a structure, facts are unable to change judgments.

In the next episode, ③ Policies as Risk Variables, Not Stabilizers, we will examine why policies began to be perceived as risk variables rather than stabilizers in a confirmation bias society formed in this way.

By Reporter Kim Young