Understand How Your Brain Works
Try this puzzle as a warm-up. A doughnut and a piece of candy cost $1.10 in total. The doughnut costs $1 more than the candy. How much does the candy cost?
Did you say 10 cents? If so, you got it wrong, along with most people who took this test! The correct answer is 5 cents. Work it out again! 😉
Your brain took a shortcut: it stored the numbers 1.10 and 1, then made a quick calculation to arrive at the wrong conclusion.
People use these shortcuts when they use their intuitive system. According to Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist and economist, we have two systems of thought:
The intuitive system, which allows for quick decision-making.
The analytical system, which is slower and more reflective.
Explore the Origin of Cognitive Biases
Every day, you are bombarded with information that your brain must perceive, analyze, sort, and perhaps even store. The brain likes coherent, familiar, and constant things, and it uses shortcuts to maintain this equilibrium without using up too much energy.
Today, you use heuristics for four major needs:
Sifting through all the information.
Identifying what you need (or don't need) to remember.
Acting quickly.
Making sense of what is going on around you.
Heuristics make life easier - most of the time. However, they can also lead to errors in judgment, also known as cognitive biases.
Cognitive bias is a systematic thought mechanism that causes errors in perception or decision-making without you noticing. Let's take this definition apart to get a better understanding.
Why is it a systematic mechanism?
By default, your brain always picks the most obvious path, the one that it already knows, when deciding what action to take. It also tends to avoid cognitive dissonances.
What is a cognitive dissonance?
Cognitive dissonance is the type of tension you feel inside when your beliefs and knowledge are questioned. Your brain hates it! It seeks to avoid these moments of discomfort by taking shortcuts-even if that means making mistakes. It takes a bit of effort to combat this natural, automatic tendency. 😉
Why does this mechanism operate without us noticing it?
Your brain naturally runs in "off" mode in repeat situations or ones you are accustomed to. That is its automatic modus operandi. Don't worry, though, most of the time, that's a good thing! It lets you act quickly without having to overthink.
Nia’s Interview on Cognitive Biases
Listen to neuroscientist Nia Cason to learn more about cognitive biases and how you can avoid them.
Let's Recap!
In this chapter, you learned that:
There are two thought systems: the intuitive system, which allows for quick decision-making, and the analytical system, which is slower and more reflective.
With the intuitive system, your brain uses mental shortcuts (heuristics) to decide and act quickly.
Those shortcuts are rooted in human evolution. They arise from the survival instinct.
Most of the time, those shortcuts are very helpful. However, they can also lead to systematic errors of judgment. That’s when they are cognitive biases.
What are the most common cognitive biases? Which ones affect you the most? Let’s discover them in the next chapter!
