Pit Bull Terrier Controversy

Biases are present in our everyday lives and they are everywhere. It was very easy to think of a situation in which I witnessed bias attitudes and saw how these attitudes had an effect on people’s lives (or animal lives). I am going to use the example of breed discrimination against the Pit Bull Terrier. Just about any situation involving the Pit Bull Terrier has been full of biases and assumptions. I have had Pit Bulls as pets my whole life; therefore, I am no stranger to these biases. I have heard just about every argument involving this breed, including arguments as to why they should be euthanized and so on. I obviously disagree, because I do not believe what I hear, I base my opinions on my observations and personal experiences with this …show more content…
Thus, when people think about the Pit Bull dog breed, they may immediately think of the words dangerous or aggressive, because that is what they hear the most from the news or other sources. Finally, another common bias that is evident in this situation, is the confirmation bias. This bias is defined as the tendency to pay the most attention to information that supports our beliefs, (Kassin, et al., 2014). When individuals are taught to fear this dog breed or have had personal experience with this breed in which it was aggressive, they may be very biased to believe that the breed is terrible. No matter how much evidence they are given that goes against their beliefs, they don’t budge. They stick to their opinions and ideas, no matter what the facts may be. For example, individuals say that Pit Bulls are dangerous, but couldn’t we say this about any dog breed. Think about police dogs, they are taught to attack criminals if need be, could we not say then that German Shepards are dangerous as well? This is a blatant and obvious fact that we witness every day, yet many individuals do not talk about this. They may never bring up this aspect in an argument, because it does not support their