Outsmart your cognitive biases via mindfulness

Hello September,

I am back! Defragmenting my mind continued with decluttering my home, wardrobes and home office. This also happened to my digital magazine subscriptions and books i keep an eye on to get inspiration and food for thought. There is no coincidence when I come across an article in HBR (September '22 Strategies for turbulent times) about biases, recalled one my favourite lectures at the business school several years back related to our cognitive biases and how they control us if we do not find a way to understand and minimize their impact and last but not least again "Did you know facts shared by a recruiter....about how much time it takes to make a decision whether they hire someone or not based on their....attire or looks". Baaaam, that was it! I could not keep calm anymore so these are my 5 cents on the topic.

Here you can find a good list of the cognitive biases but then you are probably wondering why did she mention Mindfulness? Well, because I fully and wholeheartedly believe that mindfulness can help us understand ourselves and others better, observe, analyze, lovingly talk to ourselves and identify why we said, did or thought that way in a certain situation and whether we could do better. There is no magic trick for that but stillness of heart and will to develop as a human being and walk the talk (sorry LinkedIn fellow members but there is a lot of discrepancy still to be fixed here).

Let's define simply what cognitive biases are:

• systematic errors in thinking;
• making shortcuts of making decisions and judgements;

Who is susceptible to cognitive biases?

Literally everyone without exception so please do not tell me you are NOT biased. You are, perhaps you just do not realize it yet.

Why do cognitive biases exist?

To save energy as much as possible of course. And let's be honest we really like depending on generalities and rules of thumb (heuristics). This is extremely important to us as human beings to be able to make difficult decisions quickly especially when emotional, rushed to decide or under social pressure.

Cognitive bias categories:

1. Anchoring bias: The anchoring bias, or focalism, is the tendency to rely too heavily—to "anchor"—on one trait or piece of information when making decisions. (common source bias, conservatism bias, functional fixedness, law of the instrument).
2. Apophenia: The tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things
3. Availability heuristic: The availability heuristic (also known as the availability bias) is the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be. Anthropocentric thinking; Anthropomorphism; Attentional bias; Implicit association; Selection bias; Survivorship bias; Well travelled road effect and etc.
4. Cognitive dissonance: perception of contradictory information. Normalcy bias; Effort justification; Ben Franklin effect
5. Confirmation bias: Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions. Backfire effect; Congruence bias; expectation bias; Observer-expectancy effect; Selective perception and etc.
6. Egocentric bias: is the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a higher opinion of oneself than reality. Bias blind spot; False consensus effect; False uniqueness bias; Illusion of control; Illusion of transparency; Illusion of validity; Illusion of superiority; overconfidence effect and etc.
7. Extension neglect: is a type of cognitive bias which occurs when the sample size is ignored when its determination is relevant. Base rate fallacy; Compassion fade; Less-is-better effect; Neglect of probability; Scope neglect; Zero-risk bias and etc.
8. False priors: agent detection; Automation bias; Gender bias; Stereotyping and etc
9. Framing effect: The framing effect is the tendency to draw different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented. Contrast effect; Decoy effect; Denomination effect; Default effect; Distinction bias.
10. Logical fallacy: the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning, or "wrong moves," in the construction of an argument, which may appear stronger than it really is if the fallacy is not spotted. Escalation of commitment; Hot-hand fallacy; Plan continuation bias and etc
11. Prospect theory: link to definition Ambiguity effect; Disposition effect; Endowment effect; Loss aversion; Pseudocertainty effect; Status quo bias; System justification
12. Self-assessment: Dunning–Kruger effect; Hot-cold empathy gap; Hard–easy effect; Illusion of explanatory depth; Objectivity illusion
13. Truthiness: Belief bias; Illusory truth effect; Rhyme as reason effect; Subjective validation

How we can utilize mindfulness practices to improve the situation?

Bias also means prejudice—a disposition to pre-judge and when combined with power, bias becomes dangerous. To practice mindfulness is to uncover bias.

In this practice, we quickly realize that we are not neutral observers. We are far less objective than we like to think. Acknowledging this, we can begin to tease apart the ways in which our mind leans towards or away from certain experiences, situations, or people. We see this when resisting an unpleasant sensation, avoiding someone, or discounting their ideas because of their political views, race, gender, or any other attribute.

It takes great humility to look honestly at our own biases.

Mindfulness practices at your service:

1. Listening to mindfulness podcasts or audio books
2. Mindfulness meditations
3. Mindfully reflecting on the beliefs that we hold
4. Learning to respond rather than react
5. Minding the way that we communicate
6. Opening up to new ideas and possibilities with curiosity.
7. Emotional awareness
8. Mindful media consumption
9. Mindful listening and speech

I would like to finish this article with a quote by an author I follow closely and highly recommend:

“When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.”

- Stephen Covey -

and remember we cannot completely ‘get rid’ of our biases, but we can reduce their ability to negatively impact our decisions and actions!

Recommended reads and materials:

1. Cognitive bias detailed list in Wikipedia
2. Replacing judgement with curiosity worksheet
3. Common errors in thinking worksheetCommon errors in thinking worksheet
4. Attentional Bias: Reduce workplace bias video
5. Backfire Effect - Reduce Workplace Bias video