Humans are no strangers to taking shortcuts. One type of these shortcuts, heuristics, helps us to make quick decisions, based on prior experience and pattern recognition, creating “rules to live by.”
Historically, we have survived as a species by associating stimuli with action. For example, associating noise from a nearby bush with a threat and taking quick action without thought may help you avoid being eaten. “Avoid potential danger” is not usually a bad idea: Better to act without needing to, than to wait to find out. These quick thoughts free up cognitive capacity, but they also make our decisions prone to biases. Our biases are based on previous experience, values, and beliefs and are often unconscious. Biases may be helpful (like avoiding becoming dinner for a predator) or harmful (such as vaccine hesitancy), and they affect how we see the world and the decisions we make. And, everyone has them.
By recognizing and understanding our biases, we can make better decisions. One place you can learn about biases and think about which affect you is the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine’s Catalogue of Bias.
Sometimes we overemphasize information that comes from a specific source or that fits with an internal paradigm. One way to begin to understand the values that make you hold on to biases is by taking Clearer Thinking’s Intrinsic Values Test (note that you will need to provide an email address to receive the full report from this test).
Our values may cause us to hear only the ideas that match our preconceived ideas and are unable to hear or interpret anything that is contrary. In its extreme, this leads to anti-vax thinking, flat-Earth beliefs, racism, and a host of other dangerous campaigns.
To improve our thinking processes, we need to identify and be willing to adjust for our biases and values.
For more information about how our values and biases cause us to think illogically, see the Podcast for Inquiry episode, Science Denial: Why it Happens and What To Do About It, with Gale Sinatra.
Discussion:
What are the values and biases that you hold? Have you ever engaged in a conversation with someone where they (or you) were unable to overcome biases?
Image by DS stories via Pexels, used under the Pexels License.
My biases kick in whenever I’m in a conversation with a Donald Trump supporter. I understand that I’m biased against Trump, so, discounting physical violence as generally frowned-upon in polite society, my critical thinking options are: (A) Try to empathize with the Trump supporter to see if I can get insight into a different point of view, or (B) leave the room. I know I should choose (A), but I always choose (B) because there may be a good hockey game on TV.