Recognize, Examine, and Challenge Cognitive Biases

Recognize, Examine, and Challenge Cognitive Biases

This subject fascinates me daily. I had an opportunity to study this as part of a 6-week course a few years ago and yet I still must watch for my own biases. I am referring to my own personal foibles here but know that everyone has cognitive biases. So, what the heck is a cognitive bias? 

Cognitive biases can generally be described as systematic and universally occurring tendencies, inclinations, or dispositions that skew or distort information processes in ways that make their outcome inaccurate, suboptimal or simply wrong (e.g., Lichtenstein and Slovic, 1971). From: Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience, 2nd edition, 2022.

In my own words, a cognitive bias occurs when your brain rejects facts because of biases amassed through life experiences. Your brain accepts information when it aligns with the bias or rejects information when it is not aligned with your bias. The problem is that my brain will reject facts if I am not vigilant.

In a world where we are bombarded with biased news, information, opinions, influencers, and Tiktokers, we are at risk of generating false conclusions and the consequences can be drastic. One example is people will only pay attention to news stories that confirm their opinions. Another example is during elections when people seek information that paints their candidate in a positive light and will reject any facts that paints them in a negative light. These are forms of Confirmation Bias. If someone thinks like I do, then it must be correct. This human trait of having confirmation biases leads to some pretty messed up situations but we do come by it honestly.  The brain wants to sift through information as quickly as possible and by doing so, it tests information against your biases and either accepts or rejects the information unless you intervene.

This is where I’ve had to do a lot of work. You see, when you take the time to examine and challenge your own biases, you may find out that you are wr-wr-wr-wrong. Are you starting to understand the fundamental challenge? People abhor being wrong and will generally go to great lengths to avoid accepting being wrong and that makes it very hard to change our biases. I’ve met a few people who freely admit being wrong and actually enjoyed the experience as they’ve learned something. I say few people as that has been rare, in my experience, and I include myself in the group of people who hate to be wrong. When I’m wrong, it feels like I must admit a fault when it is really nothing more than learning something new (which I enjoy).

I’ve had many biases that I had to change over the years and don’t get me wrong, that took a lot of effort. For many years there was a common belief that anything made in Japan or China was of substandard quality. My parents drilled this in my head as did the mass media. It took some time before I realized that some of the highest quality products came from overseas and in fact there was a lot of junk being manufactured in North America. Sure, you can get junk from any country but to generalize that everything is junk was just not founded. I would gladly take a guitar made in Japan over one made in the US. My point is that I believed this without ever having bought anything produced overseas. My belief was not even based on my own experience.

All that said, I wish, for 2024, that I will seek out to learn and understand the entire story by examining all the available facts, that I will not strictly follow news articles nor listen to people that only support my beliefs, and of utmost importance, I have the presence of mind and the courage to accept when I am wrong and change my beliefs.