Recently I was reading something—or, I must confess, “skim-reading” something, which is to say not very closely or thoughtfully—and thought to myself, “Exactly! That’s what I’ve been thinking!” And then, somehow, it occurred to me almost instantly that I should be wary of and interrogate that knee-jerk response. In that moment I realized there are two mental exercises that might help against confirmation bias. I’m going to try to make a point of practicing them on myself.

First, make sure the viewpoint expressed is really the same as your own. In their book They Say/I Say, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein warn against the “closest cliché syndrome.” It’s what happens when your brain automatically sorts something unfamiliar into a familiar category, without pausing to reflect whether it truly belongs in that category. It’s like an inexperienced fruit picker putting an apricot into a bucket of peaches; after all, it looks like a peach—and it certainly doesn’t belong in the bucket of apples. This can happen both negatively and positively: I can reject something because it sounds suspiciously like something else I already disbelieve, or I can embrace something because it sounds comfortingly like something else I already believe. So, first, make sure the person writing or speaking is in fact expressing your view, and not a subtly distinct one, no matter how many similarities they share.

Second, if the viewpoint expressed is in fact your own, scrutinize it. If someone else has put your viewpoint on paper or said it out loud—and better yet, given reasons and evidence in support for it—that person has done you a great favor. You can now examine what was written or said with a degree of objectivity you wouldn’t have had if you had written or said it yourself. Now that you see the viewpoint existing independent of and outside yourself, do you like how it looks? Does it stand to reason and avoid logical fallacies? Are the supports verifiable and compelling? Did the person articulating it miss or mischaracterize anything or anyone? If there’s anything fishy about how the viewpoint is expressed, at the very least you can learn how not to defend it yourself and seek better supports. But it’s also possible that the viewpoint itself is wrong. You might be like the shopper who thought he finally found the product he always wanted, only to take it home, try it, and discover it wasn’t really what he wanted, after all, either because of a defect in the product or because it just can’t do what it purports to do. In short, is listening to or reading someone else express your viewpoint, and then scrutinizing it, giving you buyer’s remorse, or are you satisfied with your purchase?