Cognitive biases are harmful judgment errors that can ruin our health and well-being, relationships, jobs and enterprises, and other aspects of our lives.
To protect yourself from these mental blind spots, you must understand what they are, where they originate, and what you can do to address them. That is what this article is about.
Cognitive Biases on the Road
As an illustration of cognitive bias, imagine you're driving on autopilot, as we all do most of the time.
To be clear, it is a good idea to allow your instinctive response take over when performing things that do not require your whole focus and attention. In normal driving scenarios, without adverse weather or stop-and-go traffic, you do not need to exhaust your mental resources by focusing entirely on driving.
Now assume that, as you are driving, the automobile in front of you unexpectedly cuts you off!
What are you doing?
You had to slam on your brakes to avoid a collision. Perhaps you flash your lights or sound your horn. You are terrified and angry.
Your sympathetic nervous system activates, releasing cortisol throughout your body. Your pulse rate accelerates, your palms begin to sweat, and a surge of heat sweeps through your body.
What is your gut feeling about the other driver? Probably your first impression is that the driver is impolite and obnoxious.
Now consider a different scenario. You're driving on autopilot, minding your own business, when you notice you need to turn right at the next intersection. You swiftly change lanes and hear someone behind you beep their horn.
You now realize that there was someone in your blind spot but you forgot to check it in your haste to change lanes, so you cut them off quite harshly.
Do you think you're a rude driver? The great majority of people would not. After all, we didn't intentionally cut off the other vehicle; we simply didn't see their automobile.
Consider another scenario: your friend has injured herself and you are rushing her to the medical room. You're driving aggressively, cutting in front of other vehicles.
Misattributing Blame Due to Cognitive Biases
Why do we give ourselves a pass while applying annoying labels to others? Why do our gut instincts constantly make us the good guys and others the bad guys?
There is an obvious gap between our gut reactions and facts. This trend is not coincidental.
Our instant gut reaction relates other people's behavior to their personality rather than the situation in which the behavior occurs. This form of cognitive bias is scientifically known as the fundamental attribution error.
This judgment error causes the following: when we perceive someone behaving rudely, we immediately and instinctively assume that this person is impolite. We don't evaluate whether an uncommon situation would have prompted the individual to act in that way.
In the case of the driver, perhaps the individual who cut you off didn't notice you. Perhaps they were driving a pal to the emergency department. However, our gut instinct tells us something different.
On the other hand, we credit our own actions to the situation rather than our nature. Most of the time, we believe we have valid and totally justified explanations for our behavior.
Are Cognitive Biases Really So Bad?
Don't you think that making harsh hasty judgments about others might be harmful?
It may not seem relevant if you believe that other drivers are jerks. Sorry for disappointing you, but this mental pattern constituted a significant threat to your relationships.
As an example, how would you perceive a possible business partner if you witnessed her ranting at someone on her smartphone?
You would probably react negatively to her and be unlikely to conduct business with her. What if you discovered she was yelling because she was on the phone with her father, who had recently misplaced his hearing aid and was planning a trip to his residence to assist him in finding it?
There could be numerous legitimate explanations for someone yelling over the phone, but we tend to assume the worst.
In a comparable situation, I was mentoring the CEO of a company where employees worked from home because to COVID-19.
He informed me of a recent instance with an employee who was having a furious Skype conversation about a disagreement with an HR manager. The Skype call was disconnected, and the HR manager informed the CEO that the employee had hung up on her. The CEO dismissed the employee on the spot.
Later, he heard that the employee believed the HR manager had hung up on her. The call was simply disconnected. Unfortunately, it was too late to reverse the termination, even if the CEO regretted his rash choice.
This unfair dismissal situation deeply discouraged the rest of the crew, resulting in a growing schism between the CEO and the rest of the team. It eventually led to the CEO leaving the organization.
Why Do We Suffer Cognitive Biases?
Intuitively, our minds appear to be one. We see ourselves as intentional and sensible thinkers. However, cognitive science research demonstrates that in actuality, the deliberate part of our minds is like a small rider on top of a massive elephant of emotions and intuitions.
Neuroscientists refer to two types of thinking systems: System 1 and System 2. However, it is better to think of them as the "autopilot system" and the "intentional system."
The autopilot system corresponds to our feelings and intuitions. Its cognitive functions take place mostly in the amygdala and other brain regions that emerged early in our evolution.
This system directs our daily behaviors, assists us in making quick judgments, and responds instantaneously to perilous life-or-death situations, such as saber-toothed tigers, using the freeze, fight, or flight stress reaction.
While the fight-or-flight reaction has helped us survive in the past, it is not well suited to modern living. We have many little pressures that are not life-threatening, but the autopilot system treats them as tigers, resulting in an overly stressful daily living experience that harms our mental and physical well-being.
Furthermore, while snap judgments based on intuitions and emotions often feel "true" because they are quick and forceful, they can sometimes lead us astray in systematic and predictable ways.
The intentional system reflects our reasoning thinking and is centered on the prefrontal cortex, the brain's most recently formed region.
This thinking system assists humans in performing more complicated mental tasks, such as managing individual and group interactions, logical reasoning, probabilistic thinking, and learning new knowledge and patterns of thought and behavior. It can sometimes make occasional mistakes in decision-making, but it is significantly more accurate than the autopilot system.
Train Your Intentional System to Address Cognitive Biases
While the automatic system operates without conscious effort, the intentional system requires deliberate effort to activate and is intellectually exhausting.
Fortunately, with enough motivation and enough training, the intentional system can activate in instances where we are prone to systematic decision-making errors. Scholars refer to these errors as "cognitive biases".
The autopilot system resembles an elephant. It is by far the most powerful and dominant of the two systems. Our emotions can frequently override our reasonable thinking.
Furthermore, our intuitions and habits shape the vast bulk of our lives, which we spend in autopilot mode. And this isn't a bad thing; it would be mentally tiring to deliberate over every move and decision.
The purposeful system resembles the elephant rider. It can actively guide the elephant in the direction of our genuine goals.
Certainly, the elephant part of the brain is massive and unwieldy, sluggish to pivot and alter, and stampedes when threatened. But we can train the elephant. Your rider could be an elephant whisperer.
Over time, you can utilize the deliberate system to alter your automatic thinking, feeling, and behavior patterns, allowing you to improve your decision-making abilities significantly.
That is why you should never trust your intuition and instead consult your brain before making any decision.
Conclusion
Let's return to the fundamental attribution error. Now that we understand cognitive biases and where they arise from, how can we explain this particular cognitive bias?
From an evolutionary standpoint, on the ancient savanna, it was advantageous for our ancestors' survival to make hasty decisions and assume the worst, regardless of the veracity of this assumption. Those that failed to do so did not live to pass on their genes.
In the modern world, where our existence is not instantly endangered by others and we have long-term contacts with strangers, such judgments are detrimental to our long-term goals. We must address this and other mental blindspots in order to make sound decisions regarding our relationships and other aspects of life.
So, spend a few minutes today to consider where you may have misplaced blame in recent weeks. Given the stress of the pandemic, it's simple to do.
Take the time to apologize to those you have wrongfully blamed. This might be the beginning of a lifelong struggle to detect and overcome cognitive biases and make the best judgments.
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