The Brain: Managing Cognitive Bias

What is Cognitive Bias?

When we are making judgments and decisions about the world around us, we like to think that we are objective, logical, and capable of taking in and evaluating all the information that is available to us. The reality is, however, that our judgments and decisions are often riddled with errors and influenced by a wide variety of biases. The human brain is both remarkable and powerful, but certainly subject to limitations. Cognitive biases are just one type of fundamental limitation on human thinking.

If you had to think about every possible option when making a decision, it would probably take a lot of time to make even the simplest choice. Because of the sheer complexity of the world around us and the amount of information in the environment, it is necessary sometimes to rely on some mental shortcuts that allow us to act quickly.

Cognitive biases can be caused by a number of different things, but it is these mental shortcuts that often play a major contributing role. These mental shortcuts are known as heuristics, and while they can often be surprisingly accurate, they can also lead to errors in thinking. Social pressures, time pressure, individual motivations, emotions, and limits on the mind's ability to process information can also contribute to these biases.

Do you know how you think?

The Brain is an amazing machine. It constantly processes all kinds of information. Recently some in the scientific community tried to express the vastness of this concept and concluded that a super-computer with 82,000 processors would be needed to process what the human brain processes in 1 second!

Needless to say your brain uses shortcuts to present completed thoughts to your consciousness. Most of the time this is practical and helpful, sometimes it is not.

Bias seems to fall in to four basic areas:

• We need to act fast

• We need to decide what we should remember

• We need to sort because we have too much information

• We need to fill in the blanks because the information we have does not have sufficient meaning

When we need to act fast:

1. We favor simple looking options over complex, ambiguous options

2. We opt for things that are more familiar

3. We look for options that justify our efforts

We need to decide what we should remember:

1. We discard specifics to form generalities

2. We edit and reinforce some memories after the fact

3. We reduce lists and events to their key elements

4. We store memories differently based on how they were experienced

When we have too much information:

1. We are drawn to details that confirm our own existing beliefs

2. We notice things already primed in memory or repeated often

3. We notice flaws in others more easily that we notice flaws in ourselves

When we need to fill in the blanks because the information we have does not have sufficient meaning:

1. We tend to find stories and patterns even when looking as sparse data

2. We fill in characteristics from stereotypes, generalities and prior histories

1. We imagine things and people we are familiar with or find of as better

2. We think we know what other people are thinking

3. We simplify probabilities and numbers to make them easier to think about

4. We project our current mindset and assumptions onto the past and future

Example

Confirmation bias favors information which confirms previously existing beliefs. For example, imagine that a person holds a belief that left-handed people are more creative than right-handed people. Whenever this person encounters a person that is both left-handed and creative, they place greater importance on this "evidence" that supports what they already believe. This individual might even seek "proof" that further backs up this belief while discounting examples that do not support the idea.

Confirmation biases impact how people gather information, but they also influence how we interpret and recall information. For example, people who support or oppose a particular issue will not only seek information to support it, they will also interpret news stories in a way that upholds their existing ideas.

Unfortunately, we all have confirmation bias. Even if you believe you are very open-minded and only observe the facts before coming to conclusions, it's very likely that some bias will shape your opinion in the end. It is difficult to combat this natural tendency.

Yet, if we know about confirmation bias and accept the fact that it does exist, we can make attempts to recognize it. That may help us see things from another perspective, though it's never a guarantee.

So, what can we do?

• Understand that your mind likes to take shortcuts it loves patterns

• Know that your thinking can be swayed by hidden bias

• Your brain likes to lay blame

• Understand that you often see what you expect to see

• Be aware that your memories are sometimes edited according to your bias

• Taking time to think is important

• Challenging the first solution may be important

• Learn to listen as though your own conclusions might be wrong

• Take time to think and reflect

Awareness is the key - with practice, change and a broader perspective will follow.

#bias #perspective #thebrain #thinking