Challenging Bias PDF

Tell me, which one will you instinctively choose ? A B  A B Tall Short A B  A B Male Female If most (if not all) of your answer is A, Congratulations! You are Biased! Do you have biases? “Akala mo lang wala, pero meron, meron, meron!” Say something about this pictu...

Tell me, which one will you instinctively choose ? A B  A B Tall Short A B  A B Male Female If most (if not all) of your answer is A, Congratulations! You are Biased! Do you have biases? “Akala mo lang wala, pero meron, meron, meron!” Say something about this picture. What biases can we have? Maybe, we can say… American is better than Asian. Young is better than old. Tall is better than short. Male is better than Female. Understanding the topic deeper A bias: Lack of objectivity or an inclination to favor one thing or person over another; A one sided point of view about something , which tends to influence decisions and opinions about other things. Understanding the topic deeper Biases are pervasive. Everyone possesses them, even people who think that they are impartial or non- judgmental. Understanding the topic deeper Biases are malleable: We can still change and overcome them; Biases can be gradually unlearned through a variety of de-biasing techniques.  Anchoring Bias We humans usually completely rely on the first information that we received no matter how unreliable that piece of information is when we take decisions. The very first information has tremendous effect on our brain. For instance, I want to sell you a car and you are interested to buy it. Let's say, you ask me what the price is and I tell you thirty thousand dollars. Now, if you come back a week later and I say I’ll sell it to you for twenty thousand dollars, this seems like a new very cheap price to you, right? Because your judgment is based on the initial information you got which was 30,000. You feel like you're getting a great deal. But let's say the first time that you ask me and I say 10,000 and then you come back the next week and I tell you I'm gonna sell to you for 20,000. Now, it doesn't look like a very good deal because of the anchoring bias..  Anchoring Bias This is just a very generic use of the anchoring bias and I don't want a bunch of comments about why thirty thousand-dollar car should be sold for ten thousand dollars but another example is trees: what if I asked you if the tallest tree in the world was higher or lower than 1,200 feet and if so how tall. The same effect occurs if I asked you to guess out of thin air instead of giving you an anchor of 1,200 feet the results are crazy number  Availability Heuristic Bias People overestimate the importance of information that they have. Let me give you an example here. Some people think that terrorism is the biggest threat to the United States because that's what they see on TV. The news always talks about it and because of that it inflates the danger. But if you look at the real perspectives, televisions cause 55x more deaths than terrorism. Yes, TVs literally following people and kill them 55 more times than terrorism. You're more likely to be killed by a cow than a terrorist according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It's more likely to die from a coconut falling on your head and killing you than a terrorist attack..  Availability Heuristic Bias Even the police that are hired to protect you from terrorists it's estimated that you were a 130x more likely to be killed by the police than by a terrorist. That's because people do not make the decision based on facts and statistics but usually, they make it on news and stories and stuff they hear from other people. It's way scarier to die from a terrorist attack than a falling coconut and because of this usually the news won't cover it because there's not much money in it  Bandwagon Effect People do or believe in something not because they actually do believe it but because that's what the rest of the world believes in; in other words, following the rest without thinking. If you've ever heard someone say, well, if your friends jump off a bridge, would you? Then that someone is accusing you of the bandwagon effect. It happens a lot with us. I mean a lot of people vote for a certain candidate in the election because he's the most popular or because they want to be part of the majority.  Bandwagon Effect It happens a lot in the stock market, too. If someone starts buying a stock because they think it's going to rise then a lot of other people are going to start picking the stock as well. It can also happen during meetings. If everyone agrees on something you are more likely to agree with him on that object. In management the opposite of this is called the group think and it's something companies try very hard to deter because if nine out of ten people agree on something for the last person doesn't and won't speak up it could squelch a great idea.  Choice Supportive Bias So, people have the tendency to defend themselves because it was their choice. Just because I made the choice it must be right. For example, let's say a person buys an apple product. Let's say it's a Macbook instead of a windows pc. Well, he's more likely to ignore the downsides or the faults of the apple computer while pointing out the downsides of the pc. He's more likely to notice the advantages of the apple computer not the windows computer. I wish someone point out that they made a bad decision.  Choice Supportive Bias Well, let's say you have a dog; you think it's awesome because it's your dog although it might poop on the floor every now and then. The same goes for political candidates not the pooping part but they both may suck. But one of the lesser of two evils maybe more right in your mind because you voted for them.  Confirmation Bias We tend to listen to information that confirms what we already know or even interpret the information that we receive in a way that confirms the current information that we already have. Let's say that your friend believes that sweets are unhealthy. This is generally a pretty broad belief. He will only focus on the information that confirms what we already know is more likely to click on videos that confirmed that belief or read articles that support his argument.  Confirmation Bias He doesn't go through and type positive health effects of increasing blood glucose levels or positive effects of eating a bowl of ice cream. No, he will instinctively go to google and type in how bad is sugar for you. The confirmation bias is a very dangerous in scientific situations and is actually one of the most widely committed cognitive biases.  Ostrich Bias This is the decision or rather subconscious decision to ignore the negative information. It may also be an indication we only want to consider the positive aspects of something. This goes beyond not only looking for the positive information but this is when there is negative information and we choose to ignore it as an outlier. Sometimes even when we have a problem, we try to ignore it thinking it will go away.  Ostrich Bias Let's say you have an assignment to do. It's not something that you really want to do so you may just keep on procrastinating with it because your mind said it will go away or is solved by ignoring it. Smokers usually they know it's bad for their health but a lot of them keep ignoring the negative implications of cigarettes thinking it will not damage them or might stop them before anything serious will happen because they consider themselves as outlier. To avoid finding out negative information. We just stop looking for it. This could be a serious crime in many scientific research laboratories and basically promotes ignorance.  Outcome Bias We tend to judge the efficacy of a decision based primarily on how things turn out after decision is made. We rarely examine the conditions that existed at the time of the decision choosing instead to evaluate performance solely or mostly on whether the end result was positive or not. In other words, you decide whether an action is right or wrong based on the outcome. This goes a little bit into consequentialism but it goes hand-in-hand with the hindsight bias.  Outcome Bias Let's say, there's a manager who wants to take the decision. His team and the data are telling him to make one decision but his gut is telling him to make another decision. Well, he goes ahead and makes the decision that has got told him to do and then in the end it was the right decision. Does that mean it's actually better to trust your gut rather than listen to your team who is advising you based on facts and statistics? Well, that's what the outcome bias is: you take the decision and base the effectiveness of your decision on the outcome even if it was luck. Now, this is bad logical thinking and will actually lead you to ruin thinking and bad outcomes in the long run.  Overconfidence Sometimes you get too confident and start taking decisions not based on facts but based on your opinion or gut because you have been correct so many times in the past. For example, you are a stock trader and you pick five stocks in a couple years all of them turn out to be successful and profitable. It increases your confidence to a point where you can start believing that whatever start you pick will be successful. It's quite dangerous because you might stop looking at the facts and solely rely on your opinion.  Overconfidence Just because you flip the coin five times and it landed on heads doesn't mean that the next time there's more than 50% chance of it landing on ahead again. Ego is the Enemy: it’s a great book about this bias and I just made a book review on it!  Placebo Bias When you believe something will have a certain effect on you then it will actually cause that effect. For instance, you are sick and the doctor gives you a certain medicine. Even if that medicine does not actually help you even if it's just made of sugar you believe that it will help you and it actually causes you to recover quicker. This might not sound very logical but dozens of experiments have proven this.  Placebo Bias That's why if you realize positive people usually have positive life and vice-versa the way you think is super important and we've hit on this in previous videos. For the same reason a lot of personal development books say that if you really believe something you will eventually achieve it or at least find a way to achieve it. Because the placebo effect will give you the motivation that need.  Placebo Bias The mind truly is a powerful thing and this actually isn't always bad thinking. In fact, you can use a placebo effect in our advantage if we use it wisely there's actually a reverse of this and it's called the nocebo and this is when it is native.  Survivorship Bias This bias is when you are judging something based on the surviving information. Let me give you an example here: There are a lot of articles titled like five things millionaires do every morning. Does that mean doing those things every morning will make you a millionaire? Know there are tons of people who did them and didn't become a millionaire but there are also tons of people who did them and did become a millionaire! So, these articles are primarily based on the ones who survived and reject all other people to do the same thing but did not become millionaires.  Survivorship Bias Another example is to say that buildings in an ancient city were built using extreme engineering because they lasted so long. This is a bad conclusion because you aren't considering what ratio of buildings were built to how many that lasted. You're only seeing the ones that lasted thousands of years of weathering when the other 90% I've already washed away. It's hard to know what you don't know.  Selective Perception Selective perception is a form of bias that causes people to perceive messages and actions according to their frame of reference. Using selective perception people tend to overlook and forget that contradicts our beliefs or expectations. Let's say, for example, you're a smoker and you're a big fan of soccer you're more likely to ignore the negative advertisements about cigarettes because since you are already smoking you have this perception that it's okay to smoke. But there's an advertisement about soccer you are more likely to notice it because you have a very positive perception about it. This is actually something really interesting and has to do with how you perceive the world due to your subconscious mind and what it filters out.  Blind Spot Bias If I asked you how biased you are you would probably say that you are less biased than the average person and you are more likely to base your judgment on facts and statistics and that's what's known as a blind spot bias or the biased bias. You’re biased because you think that you are less biased than everyone else.  Blind Spot Bias For example, I gifted something to my teacher and the next week she gave me a good grade on a test. If you ask her whether she was biased when she gave me that grade the answer will be that the gift never affected her decision when marking my paper but if you ask her if other teachers are biased when students give them gifts she will say yes in most cases and that's what the blind spot bias is. Examples What does my black scarf mean to you? Do get scared at the mere sight of the black veil? A Muslim woman is so much more than the scarf she wears. Examples So what if I am on a wheelchair? Disabled peoples are less favored and less taken seriously over the non- disabled ones because of their disability. But some disabled people who can perform better than the non-disabled ones. Examples What’s wrong with being black? Black are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police, new research estimates. Black is bad mentality and darker skin associated with perceptions of evil are dangerous beliefs. Activity: Community of Inquiry Post 3 major biases 3 Biases that you have, and 1. allow your classmates 2. to challenge them. Then, determine if 3. there is a need to change them. Let’s Discuss Further Question: Our God is a male and white God. What kind of bias is this? Recap 1. We are all biased. We need to question everything, including what seems reasonable. Reason should override our passion. Reason creates a better world. 2. Biases are common , and they collectively influence much of our thoughts and, ultimately, decision making. Understanding these biases is very helpful in learning how they can lead us to poor decisions in life. 3. Our brains are incredibly complex, and the implicit associations that we have formed can be gradually unlearned through a variety of debasing techniques.