Everyone was taught in elementary school that when a writer begins a piece, he or she must have some kind of purpose in mind. This purpose could be to entertain, to persuade, to distract or to do any number of things, but one of the biggest categories in all of the different purposes that an author can take on is to inform.

In its purest sense, writing to inform involves presenting all of the available information that one has on a topic and making the topic as clean and easy to understand as possible so that the reader can pick up on new bits of knowledge. This form of objective information passing allows readers to take in all of the knowledge that they can and draw their own conclusions from the findings. Some of the better examples of this kind of writing can be found in reference books like encyclopedias or dictionaries.

The hard part, though, is that readers who want to be informed are really reading to be entertained. People allow “click bait” titles to draw them in to read pointless or heavily biased writing rather than taking the time needed to find articles and sources that can provide much larger pieces of the whole picture, or even worse, they begin to accept a source as always being legitimate, and refuse to acknowledge partisan bias.

An individual doesn’t need to go far down the Facebook news feed to find out which sources his or her friends prefer to draw their news from. There are always a few extremely political people posting their points of view, and often their opinions, if backed up by any sources at all, are backed up by news organizations that share their political slant.

Whether it’s the conservative Facebook friend denouncing liberal economics, the liberal Facebook friend posting about his or her problems with conservative stances on issues of social justice, or even the relatively neutral Facebook friend tinting his or her profile picture for whatever the current cause or issue is, the fact of the matter is that the majority of people aren’t digging much further than they need to in order to support their own opinions.

This phenomenon is called confirmation bias, and is a very common bias that people hold around the world. It is the reason that people simply stop looking once they find evidence for what they think is the truth, even if there might be a multitude of sources contradicting that viewpoint. When a group of like-minded people share the same confirmation bias, they can create what’s known as an echo chamber, or a closed social system in which shared ideas become more and more radical.

According to researcher Mark D. Brewer from the University of Maine, the Republican and Democratic parties started their current trend of polarization in the 1970s, and as they became more radically different from one another, their individual members became more and more similar. These people have formed their own massive, political echo chambers, and as they drive each other further apart, they also produce candidates for elections who have to first meet the party’s approval by being as radically in favor of all of that party’s policies, then the American people’s approval by coming back toward the center of the vast normal curve that is the American political spectrum.

The hardest part of all of this is that it’s simply easier on an individual level to fall in line and listen to what makes us feel the most comfortable. We want to be told that we were right all along, and that the people who disagree with us have no credibility to their arguments whatsoever. That’s why we surround ourselves with writing that was never meant to fully inform, and people who we only want to hear from when they agree with us. Debating and researching represent a lot of work and critical thought, which is something that doesn’t come nearly as naturally.

That’s why we as a country need to do more of it. Whether it’s looking up the reasoning behind the other side of the political line’s stances on various issues, or just talking to someone who you know disagrees with you, it’s time that people start thinking instead of simply sliding back into place.

So here is one, simple task for all those who truly believe they’re supporting the only correct solution:

If your first thoughts of the other side of the spectrum are simply that those people that disagree with you are out of tune with reality, or in some way morally wrong for holding their beliefs, then go back and look at why you think that. Take a step deeper, and think about what kind of people hold those beliefs, what life experiences may have brought them to those beliefs and why you’ve dismissed them.