Does It Really Make Sense?

During this week, one of the most interesting things we did (in my opinion) was reading the different lenses of The Great Gatsby. All the different perspectives just blew my mind because I had never thought of the novel in that way before. However, once I read the perspectives, they all somehow seemed to make sense to some extent. The writer of the lenses had picked apart each sentence of the book to make it match the topic they were focusing on.

This reminded me of something I had previously learned in my AP psychology class: confirmation bias. This is defined as the tendency to see, only what you are looking for. For instance, for the psychoanalytic lens- there might've been parts of the book that contradicted the idea of all the relationships being fear of intimacy based. However, because the writer was only looking for evidence that proved her point, she didn't include any of that. Personally, I thought some of the ideas were a bit of a stretch and the writer was just trying to force it to fit.

Nowadays, I feel like people do this all the time, even subconsciously. People seem to always be over-analyzing every little part of life. On social media, every time I read comments on a post, users are always nitpicking and looking for something to argue about, even when it's not there. As for the confirmation bias in real life, people do it all the time! From politics only including the proof that fits what they're trying to prove, to friends pulling up certain receipts that match their story, I see it everywhere.