A cognitive bias is a fallacious way of thinking – deviating from what is rational and coherent. Since it is rare for critical thinking to be taught in schools, almost everyone is prone to this to some degree. Falling for an unintentional or a well-planned lie is human nature and often leads to regretful decisions. People create their own reality and disregard contrary information, sometimes without even realizing it. The following are just nine of the more prevalent mind biases – ways we fool ourselves.
Anchoring Bias –Believing and adopt as one’s own
the first opinion heard on any particular issue. This happens more often
today because of people’s social media “echo chamber” – only consuming
information from those media outlets, bloggers and social media accounts that
agree with their views. One example would be a person who knows nothing about
GMOs, randomly picks up a magazine in the doctor’s office and reads an
alarmist, unsubstantiated article on GMO food being harmful, and adopting that
view, without evaluating the overwhelming contrary evidence that GMOs are safe
and in many cases, necessary.
Availability Heuristic Bias – Overestimating the significance of
the information that one has. When a person does not think critically and
doesn’t take the time to properly inform himself or herself on any issue, they
fall for this bias and often end up with warped and unsubstantiated views of
reality. A few examples:
---After
seeing news reports about people losing their jobs, you might start to believe
that you are in danger of being layed-off. You start lying awake in bed each
night worrying that you are about to be fired.
---After
seeing several television programs on shark attacks, you start to think that
such incidences are relatively common. When you go on vacation, you refuse to
swim in the ocean because you believe the probability of a shark attack is
high.
---After
reading an article about lottery winners, you start to overestimate your own
likelihood of winning the jackpot. You start spending more money than you
should each week on lottery tickets.
---After
seeing news stories about high-profile child abductions, you begin to believe
that such tragedies are quite common. You refuse to let your child play outside
by herself and never let her leave your sight.
Bandwagon Effect – Choosing to believe something not
because deep down you genuinely believe it, but because of social pressure from
other people or groups. Standing out like a sore thumb, or standing up for
one’s principles, takes courage. It is much easier to get along and follow the
crowd. One example would be a person who has 4 or 5 good friends and all of
them have bought into the snake-oil of naturopathic “medicine”. That person
would be inclined to go along with their beliefs and adopt many of them as
their own. A few other examples:
Fashions: Many people begin wearing a certain
style of clothing as they see others adopt the same fashions.
Music: As more and more people begin
listening to a particular song or musical group, it becomes more likely that
other individuals will listen as well.
Social Networks: As increasing numbers of people start using certain online social networking
websites, other individuals become more likely to begin using those sites as
well. The bandwagon effect can also influence how posts are shared as well as
interactions within online groups.
Diets: When it seems like everyone is
adopting a certain fad diet, people become more likely to try the diet
themselves.
Elections: People are more likely to vote for
the candidate that they think is winning.
Availability
Cascade – An alarming story hits the news which most people have very little
knowledge or experience with. Because of perceived personal danger, anxiety
levels rise and uninformed and irrational opinions take hold. Mass hysteria is
often the result. A few examples are the year 2000 millennium bug, vaccines and
autism, mad cow disease, bird flu, swine flu, the Ebola virus, the Zika virus,
gluten, GM0s, to name a few. A good summary is from Daniel Kahneman’s popular book Thinking, Fast and Slow:
“An
availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may start from
media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and
large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk
catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried.
This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional
coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement.
The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by ‘availability entrepreneurs’,
individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of worrying
news. The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for
attention-grabbing headlines. Scientists and others who try to dampen the
increasing fear and revulsion attract little attention, most of it hostile:
anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is suspected of association
with a ‘heinous cover-up’. The issue becomes politically important because it
is on everyone's mind, and the response of the political system is guided by
the intensity of public sentiment.”
Outcome Bias – Choosing a view or opinion solely
on its apparent positive or favorable outcome. There is no attempt to honestly
evaluate how one came to that conclusion. If it turned out right, then I must
be right. The ends justify the means. In many cases things turned out right by
pure luck. What will happen the next five times a similar decision needs to be
made? Will I get lucky again? A perfect example is the placebo effect. A
snake-oil peddler may sell you something and it may actually work because you
believe in it strongly. The fact that you ingested a sugar pill is something
too uncomfortable to accept. The outcome is all that matters, even though the
path taken there was a lie.
Overconfidence Bias – Being too smart and having too
much success can have its downsides. A person can become so overconfident that
they will trust their gut instead of taking the time and effort to evaluate all
the pros and cons. As well as get some advice from others. An example would be
an entrepreneur who has so much initial success, that he or she soon falls flat
on their face because of avoiding due diligence. A charismatic alternative
medicine “doctor” can become overconfident due to placebo-causing successful
results. Soon, however, overconfidence will lead to claims of healing for a
wide range of health conditions for which there is no evidence for. The cure
for cancer has been found!
One example
is charismatic health gurus like Joe Mercola and Mike Adams of Natural News.
They are outspoken against vaccinations, in spite of the evidence. When they
come out with an exciting new “discovery” about vaccines doing harm, their
followers on social media share and repost, without verification or
corroboration. Their fearless leader is blindly followed because he has
achieved an almost god-like status in regards to matters of health.
Backfire Effect – This takes place when a person is
(surprisingly) evaluating convincing contrary evidence to his deeply cherished point
of view. He has been forewarned to expect opposition, and when it comes, he can
say “Aha! There it is!” This leads to his commitment to his beliefs getting
only stronger, instead of awakening a tinge of doubt. The deceiver has cleverly preprogrammed his
followers to expect disagreement and discourages them from investigating and
intelligently assessing the contrary claims. The deceiver also knows everyone has
a morsel or a mountain of ego and being wrong about something important is
quite uncomfortable. This is relied on to facilitate the deception. A few
examples:
“Antivaxxers
distrust big pharma and think that money corrupts medicine, which leads them to
believe that vaccines cause autism despite the inconvenient truth that the one
and only study claiming such a link was retracted and its lead author accused
of fraud. The 9/11 truthers focus on minutiae like the melting point of steel
in the World Trade Center buildings that caused their collapse because they
think the government lies and conducts “false flag” operations to create a New
World Order. Climate deniers study tree rings, ice cores and the ppm of
greenhouse gases because they are passionate about freedom, especially that of
markets and industries to operate unencumbered by restrictive government regulations.
Obama birthers desperately dissected the president's long-form birth
certificate in search of fraud because they believe that the nation's first
African-American president is a socialist bent on destroying the country.”
Empathy Gap – This is all too common and everyone
is guilty of it. It’s difficult to fully understand how we would feel or act in
the other person’s shoes, especially if the circumstance is foreign to us. Breaking
News of a monster tornado or hurricane with many casualties will elicit a different
reaction from those that have been in one, and those who have never faced such
overpowering fury from nature. Immigrants fleeing war or poverty will have more
empathy – in most cases – when comfortably settled in their new country and
seeing unimaginable suffering across the globe. Another good example is with
parenting:
“When Kristin Lagattuta and colleagues (2012) asked parents to gauge
their children's emotional lives, they found evidence of a mismatch between
what parents believed and what children reported about themselves.
“Parents who reported feeling lots of negative emotions were more likely
to overestimate their children's distress. But most parents showed a positivity
bias -- i.e., they underestimated their children's anxieties and worries -- and
the effect was related to parental optimism. If parents felt good, they tended
to assume that their kids felt good, too. A subsequent study replicated these
findings (López-Pérez and Wilson 2015).”
The Barnum Effect – This is deviously employed by
master manipulators to dupe people into believing their occult practices.
General statements are made which can apply to many, but the targets are made
to believe it is specifically about them and no one else. Cold readings
encompass most of this bias:
“Cold
reading is a set of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers,
mediums, illusionists (readers), and scam artists to imply that the reader
knows much more about the person than the reader actually does. Without prior
knowledge, a practiced cold-reader can quickly obtain a great deal of
information by analyzing the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion,
hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of
education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. Cold readings commonly
employ high-probability guesses, quickly picking up on signals as to whether
their guesses are in the right direction or not, then emphasizing and reinforcing
chance connections and quickly moving on from missed guesses……
“Subtle cues
such as changes in facial expression or body language can indicate whether a
particular line of questioning is effective or not. Combining the techniques of
cold reading with information obtained covertly (also called ‘hot reading’) can
leave a strong impression that the reader knows or has access to a great deal
of information about the subject. Because the majority of time during a reading
is spent dwelling on the ‘hits’ the reader obtains, while the time spent
recognizing ‘misses’ is minimized, the effect gives an impression that the cold
reader knows far more about the subject than an ordinary stranger could.”
Related Posts
17 Simple Ways To Spot Fake News: Instructions For The Left and The Right http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2018/04/17-simple-ways-to-spot-fake-news.html
Risk Perception: Six Fatal Flaws of the Anti-Vaccine Movement http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2018/03/risk-perception-six-fatal-flaws-of-anti.html
Pseudo-Health: 6 More Ways Liars and Hustlers Use Confirmation Bias To Dupe The Public http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2018/02/pseudo-health-6-more-ways-liars-and.html
6 Ways Liars and Hustlers Use Confirmation Bias To Dupe The Public http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2018/02/6-ways-liars-and-hustlers-use.html
30 Prying and Probing Questions To Bolster Critical Thinking http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2016/10/30-prying-and-probing-questions-to.html
9 MORE Common Characteristics of People Who Get Duped http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/08/9-more-common-characteristics-of-people.html
10 Common Characteristics of People Who Get Duped http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/08/10-common-characteristics-of-people-who.html
9 Basic Ways Shameless Health Gurus Dupe Their Followers http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2018/02/9-basic-ways-shameless-health-gurus.html
17 Concise Reasons Why Natural News Is A Fraud http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/07/17-concise-reasons-why-natural-news-is.html
7 Concise Reasons Why Alex Jones Is A Fraud http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/05/7-concise-reasons-why-alex-jones-is.html
13 Concise Reasons Why Mercola Is A Fraud http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/01/13-concise-reasons-why-mercola-is-fraud_27.html
Photo: http://anders.janmyr.com/2014/09/fallacies-and-biases-of-our-imperfect.html
Jerry De Luca is a Christian freelance writer who loves perusing dozens of interesting and informative publications. When he finds any useful info he summarizes it, taking the main points, and creates a (hopefully) helpful blog post.
0 comments :
Post a Comment
Feel free to leave any comments...