BIASES ....Affecting our Decision Making

Recently in my new assignment I realized that by looking the face of a boy of class 11th I felt that he can't be culprit but later it was found that he was the kingpin ..

Have you ever shouted, “I knew that was going to happen!” after indian team wins by hitting 3 sixes in last over....

Have you ever found yourself only reading news stories that further support your own opinion?

Above mentioned  are our biases /cognitive distortions....

 Cognitive distortion/Bias

They  are unconscious errors in thinking that arise from problems related to memory, attention, and other mental mistakes.

These biases result from our brain’s efforts to simplify the incredibly complex world in which we live.

Cognitive biases have direct implications on our safety, our interactions with others, and the way we make judgments and decisions in our daily lives.

Somd of the cognitive distortion/Biases are as follows (and some of them overlap):

• Black-and-white (or all-or-nothing) Thinking I never have anything interesting to say.
• Jumping to conclusions (or mind-reading)The doctor is going to tell me I have cancer.
• Personalization Our team lost because of me.
• Should-ing and must-ing (using language that is self-critical that puts a lot of pressure on you): I should be losing weight.
• Mental filter (focusing on the negative, such as the one aspect of a health change which you didn’t do well): I am terrible at getting enough sleep.
• Overgeneralization: I’ll never find a partner.
• Magnification and minimization (magnifying the negative, minimizing the positive): It was just one healthy meal.
• Fortune-telling: My cholesterol is going to be sky-high.
• Comparison (comparing just one part of your performance or situation to another’s, which you don’t really know, so that it makes you appear in a negative light): All of my coworkers are happier than me.
• Catastrophizing (combination of fortune-telling and all-or-nothing thinking; blowing things out of proportion): This spot on my skin is probably skin cancer; I’ll be dead soon.
• Labeling: I’m just not a healthy person.
• Disqualifying the positive: I answered that well, but lucky guess.

In layman's languages,  bias is a tendency to lean in favor of or against a person, group, idea, or thing, usually in a way that is unfair. Biases are natural — they are a product of human nature — and they don’t simply exist in a vacuum or in our mind’s — they affect the way we make decisions and act.

In psychology, there are two main branches of biases: conscious and unconscious. Conscious bias, or explicit bias, is intentional — you are aware of your attitudes and the behaviors that result from them ...

Explicit bias can be good because it helps provide you with a sense of identity and can lead you to make good decisions (for example, being biased towards healthy foods).

However, these biases can often be dangerous when they take the form of conscious stereotyping.

On the other hand, unconscious bias  or cognitive bias, represents the set of biases that are unintentional — you are not aware of your attitudes and the behaviors that result from them ...

Cognitive bias is often a result of our brain’s attempt to simplify information processing — we receive roughly 11 million bits of information per second, but we can only process about 40 bits of information per second 

Therefore, we often rely on mental shortcuts (called heuristics) to help make sense of the world with relative speed. As such, these errors tend to arise from problems related to thinking: memory, attention, and other mental mistakes.

Some of major biases which affect our decision making are....

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias refers to the tendency to interpret new information as confirmation of your preexisting beliefs and opinions.

Various social media platforms, such as Facebook, help reinforce our confirmation bias by feeding us stories that we are likely to agree with – further pushing us down these echo chambers of political polarization.

Some examples of confirmation bias are especially harmful, specifically in the context of the law. For example, a detective may identify a suspect early in an investigation and then seek out confirming evidence and downplay falsifying evidence.

Hindsight Bias

Hindsight bias refers to the tendency to perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were 

When sports fans know the outcome of a game, they often question certain decisions coaches make that they otherwise would not have questioned or second guessed.

And fans are also quick to remark that they knew their team was going to win or lose, but, of course, they only make this statement after their team actually wins or lose

When surprising outcomes arise, our expectations are violated and we may experience negative reactions as a result. Thus, we rely on the hindsight bias to avoid these adverse responses to certain unanticipated events, and reassure ourselves that we actually did know what was going to happen.

Self-Serving Bias

It refers to the tendency to take personal responsibility for positive outcomes and blame external factors for negative outcomes.

The distinction is that the self-serving bias is concerned with valence. That is, how good or bad an event or situation is. And it is also only concerned with events for which you are the actor.

In other words, if a driver cuts in front of you as the light turns green, the fundamental attribution error might cause you to think that they are a bad person and not consider the possibility that they were late for work.

On the other hand, the self-serving bias is exercised when you are the actor. In this example, you would be the driver cutting in front of the other car, which you would tell yourself is because you are late (an external attribution to a negative event) as opposed to it being because you are a bad person.

You all must hsve obsrerved, If one gets a job it's  because of his/her talent but if not then its because of prejudice/corruption by organization. ..

And in the office itself, workplace conflicts are given external attributions and successes, whether it be a persuasive presentation or a promotion, are awarded internal explanations ..

Preventing Cognitive Bias

As we know, recognizing these biases is the first step to overcoming them. But there are small strategies we can follow in order to train our unconscious mind to think in different ways n make correct decisions by

 acknowledging the limitations of memory,

 seeking perspective while making decisions,

being able to self-critique, and

choosing strategies to prevent cognitive error.