Mindset Gems that Reduce Cognitive Bias

How to avoid making mistakes every 7 seconds at a speed of 20 billion MIPS

We race through life in a semi-permanent state of irrationality: Over 100 billion neurons engage in a subconscious brain chatter, diligently estimating outcomes, making decisions, and consuming information at a speed of 20 billion million instructions per second - an enormous computational power, still unmatched even by today’s most advanced brain-mimicking computer. Our conscious self only has access to roughly 5% of this powerhouse, and, as neuroscientists show, it becomes aware of the outcome 7 seconds after the brain has already made a decision. What happens during those 7 seconds is often influenced by cognitive biases.

To cope with real-life situations, the brain often resolves uncertainty at an unconscious level — the system 1 thinking — which is fast, involuntary and often times biased. Cognitive biases creep into our daily life unnoticed, leading to conflict, unethical or poor decision-making, and discrimination.

Starting with a change of perspective is essential to achieve long-lasting bias modification in your organization.

Here are 3 ways to change your perspective on biases, that will help you reduce resistance in others and in yourself:

The Empty Cup Strategy

/making room for diversity

A long time ago, a zen master wanted to share his knowledge with a very promising student, but every time he explained something, the student tried to fit these lessons with his own philosophy. He was unable to learn anything on top of what he already knew. One day, the master poured tea into two cups, and gave one to the student. He offered to share some of his tea as well, and started pouring over the cup, until the tea spilled over. The student became annoyed: “You must wait for me to empty my cup, or I can’t have any more of your tea; it will spill over”. And the master said: “Yes, I know”.

Soon after we enter adulthood, we approach things carrying our own beliefs, assumptions and conditioned behaviors, leaving little room to adaptation. Credal beliefs are reflective and self-referential, either blindly accepted, or formed on loose inferences.

If cognitive biases are embedded in credal beliefs, one way to support progressive change is by making it more rewarding to adjust one’s belief based on evidence, than to defend it. One study at Stanford found that the number of female musicians in orchestras went from 5% to 25% as soon as the judges started evaluating the candidates from behind a screen.

Workplace discrimination, attributed to the in-group bias, can be reduced by creating situations where evidence is accumulated in favor of diversity, making it hard for anyone to continue holding biased beliefs without diminishing their credibility and sense of righteousness.

Take-away? When evaluating performance, eliminate distractions.

Escape the Black Box thinking

/making smarter purchases

Unaware of the subconscious mechanisms and short-cuts driving their opinions and decisions, many people consider their own mind to be a black box, meaning that whatever happens in the mind remains inaccessible to our understanding. As a result, we seldom question our sense-making process, and only use information that is immediately, consciously available to us.

The price-value bias is one example of automatic thinking that relies too much on what we are able to observe, rather than on what’s actually valuable. If you’re shopping for a gift, and have to choose between two similar items, from two merchants, for example — two bottles of red wine, the one that is more expensive seems to be of higher quality, even if intrinsically, the difference is negligible. This happens because we believe that “we get what we pay for”, and only focus on immediately available indicators of value, rather than evaluating how we reached that decision in the first place. Product framing greatly influences its perceived value — and implicitly, is directly related to post-purchase satisfaction.

A perspective change from the black box mindset requires less effort than expected. Research shows that just a few minutes of mindfulness can mitigate the effect of the sunk-cost effect, improving the outcome of the purchasing decision-making process in personal and business environments. A few minutes of meditation can reduce suboptimal decision making when it comes to evaluating options in terms of their face value instead of what they appear to be.

It’s this type of awareness that we encourage people to develop while using Unbias. We help them step outside their own black box by understanding how cognitive biases work in-context, and by going through a learning process that is both introspective and educational.

Take-away? Meditate for a few minutes before making a major purchase.

Leave your cave

/explore freedom

Francis Bacon is one the first British empiricists to suggest there are three main barriers to knowledge, one of which is his concept of “idols of the cave”, constructed on top of Plato’s cave allegory.

If you spent your entire life in a cave, tied up facing an empty wall, your understanding and model of the outside world would be constructed based solely on your observations of shadows. If given the choice to turn around and see the actual things, you most likely would find it incredibly difficult to integrate to integrate that knowledge into your constructed reality.

The idols of the cave are misconceptions and constructs describing your understanding of the world from a very limited perspective. People willfully defend biased judgements because that’s how they’ve been living their entire lives. The cave allegory is helpful in understanding biases against change, such as the status-quo bias, the false consensus effects and the illusion of control.

Take-away? Before making a decision, consider the exact opposite perspective; don’t go with your first option out of inertia.

Even the smartest people are biased. However, we can still learn to overcome biases, and adapt our perspective to reflect the cultural changes our modern society is going through.

Unbias is a gamified app based on 6 decades of academic research in the field of decision making and cognitive sciences. Our mission is to make bias modification and awareness training accessible to 5 billion mobile users worldwide. We are currently in beta, and aim to launch early 2016.

Follow us: @unbiasapp, @katchja, @thetimeafternow