What Clouds Our Judgement?

 

WRITTEN BY- PRACHI MITTAL

(EDITED BY- ANANYA JULKA)

Learning about cognitive biases

What is this fancy looking psychology term? Well, this term makes the decision making process easier for you. It is a fault or error in your thinking capabilities which occurs when we are processing information. This affects decision making and judgements of a person. There are various kinds of cognitive biases:

• Anchoring bias: When we rely too heavily on the first information received.

Remember the time when your teacher told you that your syllabus has been reduced? We felt so elated. And when she said that more chapters have been added? We were angry and sad. This is because we used the original syllabus as an “anchor”. The bias sets expectations.

•  Actor-observer bias: It is the tendency to attribute our actions to external causes and other’s actions to internal causes.

I failed because the paper was tough. Instead the reason was that I didn’t study properly which most people don’t admit.

•  Attention bias: The tendency to selectively pay attention to certain things.

The car I want to buy has extremely good exteriors and interiors. The buyer will ignore the other negative features.

• Availability heuristic bias: Tendency to overestimate available information.

When the pandemic started, everyone was scared because of the information being displayed by mass media. Now, we have had a reality check and time to understand that we can fight COVID-19.

•        Conformation bias: Favouring information that conforms to your points and ignoring any opposite evidence.

 When in an argument, we always tend to favour the information that is in agreement with our worldview and neglect any contradicting information.

•        False consensus effect: The tendency to overestimate how much people agree with you.

Before every election, we see predictions of ‘inflated’ numbers of votes a candidate will receive. They overestimate the number of people agreeing with their party or agenda.

•        Functional Fixedness: Tendency to associate an object with a particular function.

Paper is used to write. But do you know that it can also be used as fuel in absence of wood?

•   Halo Effect: Judging a person’s character and abilities from his appearance.

The moment we see a person with a wrapped handkerchief around their neck and lowered pants, we will perceive him as a thief or a miscreant.

•    Misinformation effect: When post event information interferes with original memory.

You see a red ball. You hear 10 people saying it’s orange. Next day, you will recall seeing an orange ball.

•    Optimism bias: Tendency to think that you are more likely to attain success than others.

I just need to finish these 5 chapters, and then I can top the exam.

•        Self-serving bias: Tendency to appreciate self when good things happen and blame external forces when bad things happen.

I topped because I put in a lot of hard work. I failed because the exam was too difficult.

•        Dunning-Kruger effect: When people believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are.

A person not willing to accept their incompetence in a field when in reality knowing very little.

 

There can be many causes like emotions, motivations or social pressure for these biases to occur. But the fact is, they always do.

 

Which kind of bias is this? Can you figure that out?

It is important to remember that, if we think we aren’t prone to these biases, we are already biased.