I am NOT biased!

What is it?

In a 2015 study about the bias blind spot with over 600 United States residents, more than 85% believed they were less biased than the average U.S. resident. Only one (!) participant believed they were more biased than average. ?I’m absolutely sure that you would get pretty much the same result in any other region of the world. In simple terms this bias says that we think that we are less biased than others (or even not biased at all). We are blind to our own thinking errors.

Why does it happen?

I believe that there are at least two reasons for this. Firstly, biases and cognitive errors are considered undesirable. We do not wish to be associated with them. Secondly, they are hard to detect by self-inspection. It is generally much easier to see the fault others have than our own shortcomings, not only with thinking errors. But these beasts are even harder to detect than other “wrong” behaviors, as they are part of our “normal” setup. And we are usually not aware of them unless we deal with this topic (like reading this newsletter). But even then will we most likely deal with them on a rather abstract level. Actually “seeing” them in action inside of us requires a lot of training and conscious effort in the moment.

How can we avoid it?

The first and most important step in my view is to acknowledge that we are biased. And that this is not a bad thing. Our brain was developed by evolution and not by programmers (well, they would perhaps have avoided “illogical” things like biases, but we would need constant patching and software updates with countless reboots). And evolution made our brain work really good for what it has been “designed” for. We use fast and efficient heuristics, which do the job very well in most cases. Only in some exceptions do we step into the trap of biases. Thinking errors also occur as a side effect of something useful for our survival as social animals.

Once we accept that we have built-in biases, we can actively work on them. Not in a sense to get rid of them. This would simply not be possible. But we can learn to manage them. We can try to sense when they kick in (like with a smoke sensor) and start counter measures. That’s what the whole newsletter was about. But this requires awareness and practice. Unfortunately, a lot of practice. And we will never become perfect, no matter how much we try. On the other hand we can see this as the nice part of the story: it never gets boring…

What’s your thinking around that?

Does this sound familiar to you? Any own experiences or stories you would like to share? Please start a conversation in the comments section!

#decisionmaking #bias