What Are The Most Common Biases?
Would it surprise you to know that there are more than 200 cognitive biases? 🤯 We can't deal with all of them in this course, so we'll focus on the most common ones. Let's go! 🤩
Bias #1: The Confirmation Bias
You wish to change your eating habits, and you are thinking about following a high protein diet. Before you begin, though, you do a quick online search for "advantages of a high protein diet." Now you are subject to confirmation bias!
The confirmation bias consists of paying more attention to hypotheses that agree with your ideas or opinions while paying less attention to information that runs opposite. In other words, people tailor reality by selecting, interpreting, and remembering the information that suits them.
Bias #2: The Overconfidence Effect (a.k.a. the Dunning-Kruger Effect)
You receive a task at work on an unfamiliar subject, so you have to learn about it. When your manager talks to you about it, the job doesn't seem to be too challenging: you tell yourself that you should be able to get it done in just a few days. Now you're a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect! Right now, you know nothing of this subject. How can you estimate your time correctly?
The overconfidence or Dunning-Kruger effect consists of overestimating your skills or ability to manage something. Often, it occurs when you are unaware of the complexity of whatever you are about to undertake: you don't know what you don't know, and you tend to show an excess of confidence out of ignorance.
Bias #3: The Survivorship Bias
Imagine you want to evaluate the performance of companies during the COVID pandemic. If you rely solely on the figures from companies that are still operating, what happens? The analysis ignores those that closed during this period!
The survivor bias is a selection bias. It means you assess an idea or an initiative based on those who succeeded and are statistical exceptions: survivors!
Bias #4: The Sampling Bias
Say you want to know what people like to have for breakfast. You can decide to conduct a wide-ranging study across coffee shops, supermarkets, and other stores that sell breakfast foods. You'll learn what people have for breakfast unless it isn't categorized as breakfast food (fruit, ham, cheese, etc.). Additionally, you won't know about people who don't eat breakfast.
This bias relies on an unrepresentative sample to draw general conclusions. In other words, this is a generalization from a specific case!
Bias #5: The Escalation of Commitment Bias
Imagine the following situation: You're unsatisfied with the results of a project you've been working on for years and are invited to a meeting to discuss it. You've invested a great deal of time in the project, and some are considering ending it. What's your initial reaction?You have already spent so much time and energy on the project that you'd prefer to see it through. Stopping now is inconceivable!
This attitude of not wanting to change course despite the negative results is an escalation of commitment. It's also known as the sunk-cost bias.
Bias #6: The Mere-Exposure Effect
You set off on vacation with a friend. In the car, he makes you listen to a new piece of music. Initially, you aren’t particularly impressed. But you hear it two, three, or four times more, and you like it in the end.
The more you are exposed to a person, product, or place, the greater the probability that you will like them or it. This cognitive bias is the mere-exposure effect.
Bias #7: The IKEA Effect
You’ve spent 20 years living in your current home, and you’re putting it on the market to move to another country. This house is where your children grew up. You’ve taken great care of the garden, and you repainted the whole place yourself. Looking at the current market, you see that most comparable houses are worth anywhere between $450,000 and $500,000. You believe that your garden looks better than the other houses’ and your paint is more recent than the others. You decide to price your home at $550,000. Careful, you might be suffering from the IKEA effect!
According to this effect, your brain values your things and ideas more than those produced by others. In a company, this bias might cause managers to overestimate their own decisions!
Practice Suspending Your Judgment
You must have gotten the message by now; your interpretations are often biased. Culture, identity, and experience also affect how you look at the world: people tend to understand situations in terms of their own vision, convinced that it is the truth.
The above image shows that the same object or subject can have very different conclusions depending on your viewpoint.
You have to suspend judgment to counter these biases and get a clear look at a situation. It is profoundly counter-intuitive because, as you know, your brain hates it when your most deeply held beliefs are questioned.
It means that your intuitive conclusions are subject to biased interpretations. Careful, though, it doesn’t mean that they are necessarily false or wrong! But you will try to objectively observe whether or not you have good reasons for thinking the way you do.
How can you apply this suspended judgment in the professional world?
Nia’s Interview on Cognitive Biases in Professional Situations
Nia Cason shares her personal experience with cognitive biases as a science journalist. Listen to her story to learn more about how cognitive biases can affect your judgments in the professional world:
It's Your Turn
Can you identify the shortcuts that your brain takes? Here’s a quick activity to find out. Let your imagination and analytical skills loose!
The objective is to estimate which cognitive biases riddle big societal or individual decisions.
Here are several important topics that require entities or individuals to make decisions, which could be influenced by cognitive biases.
Which cognitive bias do you think could cloud the interested party’s judgment?
Private companies in the face of climate change.
A proud meat-eating Texan is told that Christmas dinner will be vegan.
A conservative father is told that same-sex marriage is going to be legalized.
Are you done? Read the feedback below!
We identified one per theme, but there is more:
1 | Private companies in the face of climate change. | Escalation of Commitment bias - many companies have invested in solutions that are now known to produce unsustainable externalities. |
2 | A proud meat-eating Texan told is that Christmas dinner will be vegan. | Status Quo bias - his past Christmas meals included meat until now. |
3 | A conservative father told that same-sex marriage is going to be legalized. | Implicit bias - his conservative mindset might imply a negatively skewed and stagnant vision of homosexuality. |
Let's Recap!
In this chapter, you learned that:
Cognitive biases occur independently of your will, and to guard against them, you have to suspend your judgment.
There are over 200 biases! Most have been studied to understand better how people think and make decisions.
In the coming chapters, we will continue to explore cognitive biases and suggest practical approaches to developing your critical thinking. Start to practice the art of rational doubt in the next chapter!
