Understanding Projection Bias for Better Thinking and Mental Health

Understanding Projection Bias for Better Thinking and Mental Health

Projection bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate how similar their future characteristics, such as tastes and beliefs are to their current ones. Essentially, this bias causes people to make false self-predictions by projecting their current characteristics onto their future selves, thereby underestimating how much their characteristics are likely to change over time.

Projection bias can strongly influence the thoughts, speech and actions of people in various fields, so it is important to understand it. To learn more about projection bias, we need to see how to deal with it in practice.

How to deal with projection bias

There are several ways you can reduce projection bias:

• It is important to understand what this prejudice is and what causes it.
• Understand when and how this bias can affect other people in situations.
• Be aware of common projection traps, such as underestimating the influence of triggers and visceral factors, overestimating the likelihood of following up on future plans, and oversensitivity to your current state when making long-term decisions.
• Identify specific situations where this bias can play a key role, and plan how you will deal with it. For example, if you know that the projection bias will cause you to buy the wrong food or too much food when you shop while hungry, then eat before going grocery shopping.
• Identify past situations where the projection bias influenced your thinking, and use that to plan better. For example, if you’re contemplating about buying something, ask yourself how you felt about a similar product that you purchased before.
• Ask leading questions like "how likely am I to feel the same way in a month?" or "Am I sure I'll feel the same after I've had a chance to calm down?".
• Get feedback from friends or family you trust. For example, you could ask someone who knows you if they think the purchase you're considering is something you'll regret.
• Use self-dissociation techniques, such as thinking about what advice you would give your friend if they were in your situation.
• Reserve enough time to think things over and, above all, to calm down, before making important decisions. For example, if you are emotionally charged in the moment, such as because you just received a high-pressure sales call, you may delay making a decision until you are away from the salesperson and have had a chance to sleep.
• Establish rules for making decisions in advance, such as counting to ten or sleeping before making big decisions or not making big purchases on your first shopping trip. Use common distortion techniques like slowing down your thought and clarifying it.

With a few modifications, you can also use these techniques to reduce bias in other projections. For example, if you want to reduce someone's projection bias, you can explain what that bias is, ask leading questions that make them realize that their tastes are likely to change over time, and encourage them to chill first when making a decision.

Also note that while you sometimes can't reduce projection bias, it can be useful to take it into account when understanding and predicting people's behavior, including your own. For example, accounting for predictive bias can help you understand why someone made a particular bad purchase, or predict that they will do so in the future.

When have you seen projection bias in others? Have you been guilty of this yourself?

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