The Mother of All Biases
A quick glance at the title may have tipped you off to what this blog is about. In the world of social psychology we all know the mother of all biases to be the infamous confirmation bias. It is that bias which we all have that causes us to target information that supports a position or opinion we have in a matter so that we feel validated, or right.
Chip and Dan Heath refer to the confirmation bias as the third villain in our decision making process. We are more concerned with reassurance than truth. We all do it. If you are reading this and saying to yourself, "Not me", chances are you are more guilty of it than most people are.
There really is no way to turn this bias off but there is a way to bring awareness of it to the forefront of our thinking so that we may be able to catch it. Simply acknowledging you are guilty of it is the first step and admitting that it does not lead to the best decision making process is the second.
Creating space and widening the gap between impulse and response takes practice to get good at. It is no different than anything else in life you want to master. If you want to be a better physician, golfer, or carpenter, it takes practice, effort, and commitment. The same holds true for being a better parent, spouse, boyfriend, student, friend, co-worker and so on. No one is born great at these things.
We humans are chock full of biases and heuristics (shortcuts in our thinking process) that rush us to judgement of people and situations all while making us feel we are correct in our positions. Too many people are more concerned with being right than learning. Learning is the portal to improvement and growth and the key to learning is acknowledging that we don't know what we think we know. More importantly, we don't know what we don't know. The confirmation bias gives us that false sense of security that we know more than we do and becomes as obstacle to learning and improving. Simply acknowledging this is incredibly empowering and helps us to step into that portal where improving at whatever we want to improve at is there for the taking.
Reference: Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath
#elliotyi
#paradigmleft
#habits
#mindset
Chip and Dan Heath refer to the confirmation bias as the third villain in our decision making process. We are more concerned with reassurance than truth. We all do it. If you are reading this and saying to yourself, "Not me", chances are you are more guilty of it than most people are.
There really is no way to turn this bias off but there is a way to bring awareness of it to the forefront of our thinking so that we may be able to catch it. Simply acknowledging you are guilty of it is the first step and admitting that it does not lead to the best decision making process is the second.
Creating space and widening the gap between impulse and response takes practice to get good at. It is no different than anything else in life you want to master. If you want to be a better physician, golfer, or carpenter, it takes practice, effort, and commitment. The same holds true for being a better parent, spouse, boyfriend, student, friend, co-worker and so on. No one is born great at these things.
We humans are chock full of biases and heuristics (shortcuts in our thinking process) that rush us to judgement of people and situations all while making us feel we are correct in our positions. Too many people are more concerned with being right than learning. Learning is the portal to improvement and growth and the key to learning is acknowledging that we don't know what we think we know. More importantly, we don't know what we don't know. The confirmation bias gives us that false sense of security that we know more than we do and becomes as obstacle to learning and improving. Simply acknowledging this is incredibly empowering and helps us to step into that portal where improving at whatever we want to improve at is there for the taking.
Reference: Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath
#elliotyi
#paradigmleft
#habits
#mindset
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