” Like so many others, I had confirmation bias, wanting this young, ambitious woman with a great idea to succeed.”
Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is a variation of the more general tendency of apophenia.Apophenia is the tendency to perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things.
(from Wikipedia)