Nov 22, 2020
Cognitive Bias — How to Debias Your Own Biases
Whether we’re willing to acknowledge it or not, we all have some kind of cognitive bias. Now, more than ever, it’s important to learn about them, what are they and how can we disrupt these biases.
As human beings, we’re not meant to be perfect, we’re only meant to be the best version of ourselves, so let’s work towards that, every single day.
What is a Cognitive Bias?
Cognitive biases are essentially systematic patterns from deviation from norm or rationale in judgement. It’s a mouthful isn’t it? Let me explain that in simpler words.
Cognitive biases influence how we think and often lead to errors and mistakes we make in terms of decisions and judgements. In other words, our judgement is clouded because of these biases.
You may have also come across another term, which is referred to as implicit bias. Just like any other cognitive bias, the implicit bias, also known as unconscious bias is a result of the brain’s tendency to try and simplify the world.
Because the brain is constantly being flooded with more information than what it can actually process, the brain is then forced to make mental shortcuts to make it faster and easier for the brain to sort through all this data.
Before we learn how to disrupt our biases, let’s first explore the different types of cognitive biases.
As I talk through the different biases I’ll be giving you examples in the context of the education space as well as the workplace to help better your understanding.
Anchoring Bias
Anchoring comes from the word anchor (which I’m sure you would have figured out by now).
What is this bias? It is over relying on the first piece of information obtained and using that as a baseline for comparison.
For example, let’s say a company is hiring for a specific job, and let’s say they make the candidates do a specific test. Now let’s assume one of the very few candidates happens to score a very unusual high score.
Now what might happen from that is it may set the bar so high that candidates that come after who do score a good score appear to be less qualified than they would otherwise would. Which is obviously not true.
Think about universities for example, they always calculate an average score for each year (for a specific course and module). Let’s say the class of 2020 scored an unusual high score for that module. Now imagine the class of 2021 just scores a good score which is still good, but in the eyes of the university that may come across as if the class of 2021 is “less capable” academically speaking than the class of 2020.
Choice-Supported Bias
Which basically says that once a decision is made, people tend to over focus on its benefits and minimize its flaws. You may ask, what does that mean?
This might mean that companies may often look at the past to make choice-supported decisions. Let’s assume they have had really good candidates in the past that have come from university A.
They may now assume in the future that all candidates that come from university A are amazing because it worked out in the past for them.
Confirmation Bias
Which means that if I say something is true and then something else or someone else confirms that it is true, then that makes it true.
Now this is totally wrong! Just because I say something is true, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is actually true. It may be completely false, but because of confirmation bias I might only be looking for things that confirm my beliefs.
Fundamental Attribution Error
It means overemphasising personal factors and underestimating situational factors or circumstantial factors when explaining other people’s behaviour.
For example, if a company is hiring for a specific job, and they have an interview with a candidate today at 3pm and the candidate is late for that interview.
The company might just make the conclusion that he/she is irresponsible or lazy as opposed to actually remembering that for example, traffic is a circumstantial factor that you can’t control which could have been the reason as to why the candidate was late.
Group Think
This is a really dangerous bias, and a lot of people will understand why. Let us say there is a group of people that believes in a certain idea or certain perspective.
As soon as a new member is added to that group, they most likely will be influenced to share the same idea or same perspective on a given topic.
This makes it difficult for minority opinions to be heard if the majority of the group holds a strong contradictory view.
Availability Bias
Which means, making decisions on immediate information, or examples that come to mind. If a company for example, hears about a candidate from London that accepted a job but then quitted that job a month later because of the weather or whatever the reason is.
That company may then just assume that all candidates from London are like that and avoid hiring from there. This is the danger about generalizing things.
Because you’re effectively making a decision based on immediate information and you’re just generalizing it.
Ostrich Effect
If I’m not mistaken, ostrich is that animal with long legs and long neck right?
Anyways, it means that you avoid bad news about a decision by ignoring data that might be negative.
For example, a company may choose not to pay attention to data on how their choice affects diversity goals or minority employment rates within their company.
Recency Effect
Which means, recent events are easier to remember and can be weighted in more heavily than past events or potential future events.
For example, if a company is hiring candidates. The candidates that were interviewed earlier on during the process may be evaluated less favourably because of the candidates that were interviewed more recently that are remembered more vividly.
How can we debias our biases?
Now the question here is how can we disrupt these biases? How can we debias our own biases? Because clearly, this is an issue.
Let me give you a few tips that I believe are stepping stones towards a better and more objective decision-making.
1. Increase Self-Awareness
This is one of the most important steps towards disrupting our own biases because if you’re not aware that you have a problem, you won’t be able to do anything about it.
Start by noticing your reactions, your responses, your judgements, throughout the day to different individuals and situations.
Pay attention to how you feel, often when we encounter a difference, we might have a specific reaction to that difference, where a judgement will then arise from that.
You should question yourself every time something like this happens, is this one of my biases? Is my judgement clouded? What am I feeling?
For example, the gender-bias, where you might believe that one gender may do a specific job better than the other. But why is that?
Another example is the level of respect you may show to people with different jobs, why is it that people tend to show more respect to a CEO than they do to a cleaner?
2. Identify who and what makes you uncomfortable
Often, there is someone in your workplace who rubs you the wrong way, someone who annoys you.
Become curious, ask yourself, what is it that really makes me respond this way to this person? Do I really know that person? Is there a bias towards that person?
Another area to consider is when someone has a specific point of view on an issue and that view is different from yours, does that make you uncomfortable?
Being aware of your feelings and discomfort is an excellent way to taking a peak at your unconscious biases.
3. Educate yourself on cognitive biases
Reading this article is a really great way to start understanding what cognitive biases are really all about.
Once you start educating yourself, you start becoming more aware and once you start becoming more aware, you start questioning things more, and as soon as you start questioning things a bit more, you are then able to make a change.
It all starts with yourself, if you become curious about yourself, and the decisions you’ve made and the behaviours you have. You certainly will be able to start walking a path of making a change.
Consciously adopting a curious mindset towards yourself and what biases shape you is an excellent way to start disrupting your own biases.
I’m a Podcast Host @ What’s Up & What’s Next? Podcast — I’ve shot an episode on “Cognitive Biases” where I talk about all of this in case you’re curious, check it out down below.
