Are You a True Rationalist?
If there’s something you really want to believe, that’s what you should question the most.
Are you sure that you are rational and sound minded in decision making most of the times? If you want to believe so, thoroughly question yourself. Because there may be unknown cognitive biases which have hijacked or conquered your brain and rationalism. Even though the human brain is known to be the greatest technology ever created, it has its own flaws. Sometimes people are blinded by their own perceptions rather than true facts.
This article covers three such cognitive biases or prejudices that people unknowingly have which may affect the workplace decision making as well.
The first cognitive bias I am going to talk about is called ‘Confirmation Bias’. It can be simply briefed using one sentence. A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest. I am pretty sure you have met dozens of people who act very stubbornly when someone is trying to prove their idea is wrong. They keep arguing because they don’t want to accept any evidence which go against their previous knowledge. Even I am like this sometimes. One example I can give upon this is, if a person wants to prove that Neil Armstrong went to moon, he will google it using a search phrase like ‘Neil Armstrong went to Moon’, then google will list down results that confirm this search phrase. In a similar way if he wants to prove that Neil Armstrong didn’t go to moon, he will goggle it like ‘Neil Armstrong didn’t go to moon’ and the results will be listed accordingly. In both of these cases what we are doing is trying to confirm what we know already. Even the way we search in google is manipulated by our confirmation bias. But in rational thinking we have to come out of our comfort zones and try to find facts which can break our beliefs. Then only we can do the so called ‘out of the box thinking’, which is an organizational buzz word. Similar cases can happen in the workplace as well, for example someone holds a stereotype like girls are not good at technical work, they can only do the documenting and organizing stuff etc. When that person get a chance to work with a girl what can happen is he will only judge her depending on the technical mistakes she made, but he will ignore all the technical challenges she has accepted and all her technical contribution because he wants to confirm his stereotype. This kind of a bias is much hardwired to human nature. It can be reduced by observing others’ behavior and questioning ourselves.

The second bias I am going to talk about has an interesting name, it’s called The Bandwagon Effect. The meaning is, people do or believe things primarily, because other people are also doing it.

For example you have a gang or a set of friends that you are very comfortable with, and one of them says, food at that specific restaurant is horrible. Then it is natural that you will not eat from that restaurant. You are not going to critically evaluate that restaurant or its food, but you just avoid eating from it. Little by little your entire gang will stop going to that restaurant. Restricting your judgments based on what others say has bad effects on your organization as well.

Have you ever figured out that brainstorming or thinking as a group is unproductive most of the times? Think about a meeting you have attended with a group to brainstorm some new ideas. But most of the times you will end up gathering no interesting ideas. Because when working in a group people will not think individually, most of the times they will agree to what others are saying. It’s not a fault of the individuals, but that is the human nature. Therefore most of the times, the psychological recommendation is to, think or brainstorm individually and evaluate it together as a group.
The last but not the least is the ‘Negativity Bias’. I have my personal experiences related to this. I am someone who cries when there is a very emotional scene going on a movie or a drama. While crying, I am trying to relate those sad scenes from the movie to my personal negative memories, then I start crying really hard, not thinking of the movie, but thinking of myself. Have you ever known that humans are more likely to be affected by negative memories than pleasant memories? Even at a neural level, from the brain’s perspective, the reaction to negative stimuli is much higher than positive stimuli. And trust me, science is saying women are more vulnerable to this negativity bias than men.

Not only girls, but have you seen that even News and Media are also taking advantages of these people’s negativity bias. They only highlight negative news such as, natural disasters, war or crimes because people pay attention to them. To create a positive workplace, it’s really important to understand this negativity bias within peers and acting in a way which will mostly create positive vibes.
To sum up things, I was discussing about 3 cognitive biases, which can limit your thinking capacity. Confirmation bias, bandwagon effect and the negativity bias. Understanding this kind of biases exist within yourself will help you to reduce them little by little and polish up your rational thinking. Understanding this kind of biases exist within others will help you to understand your peers and create a friendly and positive environment.
What holds you from reaching your true potential is inside your head. Let them go and you will shine