Monumental Disaster

Upon coming to a new school, one is often bombarded by the opinions of the people who you meet and form ALOT of first impressions of everyone around you based simply on how a person looks, how they talk. and how they act around others. In addition to people, I think its funny how stuff like confirmation biases and belief perseverance also apply to places. I say this because one of my close friends had a bad time at a restaurant and has not had a good one since then.

Hearing so many good things about a particular restaurant here in Georgetown, Monument Cafe, my friends and I decided to go check it out and see what all the hub-bub was about. We went into the restaurant ready for some good food and service, but here's how the night went for him and the rest of us.

We had to wait about 15 minutes to get the waitress to order our drinks after being seated. Being that we had waited so long already, we also placed our orders for dinner. About 20 minutes after ordering, all of us got our drinks except for my close friend. We were already annoyed for the evening, so this didn't help him at all. The meals came out shortly after the drinks got there, but they got his particular order wrong, so of course they took it back. Luckily, he reminded the waitress about his drink, which she promptly brought him. However, his meal didn't come out for another 10 minutes. So while the rest of us were already eating...he had some nice air to feed him. His meal finally came out and was still slightly wrong, but being as hungry and frustrated as he was, he didn't care enough at that point. Needless to say, he had one hell of a night. After this experience, he believes that Monument Cafe is not a good restaurant.

Ever since then, he has only gone back twice and not by his choice. Both times he had stuff happen that led him to display a confirmation bias. A confirmation bias being the tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs. I mean good stuff happened too, but the few bad things just added to his bias thus strengthening his belief perseverance--the tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, 2008). The third time he went was by far the best, but he still does not like the place.

I'm in the same boat as him. I just have these beliefs that Monument Cafe just isn't that great and ever since that night have had a hard time accepting that its a good restaurant. I am hoping though that one day I can learn to like Monument Cafe, but until then I'll just go elsewhere.

Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2008). Perceiving Persons. In Social Psychology (7th ed., pp. 93-127). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.