Discuss How Cognitive Biases Affect Our Daily Life

A cognitive bias refers to a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion (Haselton et al, (2005), p724-46). Some examples of common cognitive biases are conformation bias, risk aversion bias and just world hypothesis. We humans like to think of ourselves as highly efficient, complex and intelligent creatures but unfortunately we are default to many making many errors in day to day life. These errors can take place when making decisions, calculations, using memory and social attribution. These biases occur due to various reasons including mental shortcuts , brains ability to process information , emotional and moral motivations, mental noise and social influences .Cognitive biases have been divided into different types with the main three types being decision making biases, social biases and memory biases. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to discuss in depth cognitive biases related each of the three main types.  Some examples of common cognitive biases are conformation bias, risk aversion bias and just world hypothesis.

We  as  humans experience  decision  making  and  behavioral  biases  on  a day  to  day  bases. Some example of such biases are confirmation bias, loss aversion bias and the band wagon effect. Confirmation bias, is the predisposition to search for, gather, approve, and remember information in an approach that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses, while giving unduly less attention to other likelihoods (Plous, Scott (1993) p. 233.) Confirmation bias was first scientifically tested and studied by Richard Wason who was interested in discovering the errors made by humans during decision making. He formulated a test called the 2-4-6 task .Individuals who took part in the study were told to identify the rule which the experimenter had in mind after providing one hint , which was that the numbers should be in arrangements of three .The rule that the experimenter had in mind was that the numbers are arranged in increasing order. The majority of individuals were unable to come to conclusions which did not correspond with their initial hypothesis. That is they tended to give a narrow range of answers which confirmed or supported their original hypothesis (Wason, (1960), p 129-140). The significance of these findings is that humans tend to look for information that supports their prior beliefs while ignoring potentially correct alternatives. However Wason’s work was criticized by Joshua Klayman and Young-Won Ha. They claimed that the study showed that experiments tend to be designed to support the proposed hypothesis and not necessarily conformational bias. Conformational bias affects our decisions making in all aspects of life including politics, law, health and medicine, investing, science and self-image. When taking politics and law into consideration confirmation biases can lead to fatal consequences. For example leaders may misjudge the power of a foreign threat if they overestimate their own countries strength. A extended study of expert political commenter’s by researcher Philip.E.Tetlock, came to the conclusion that the majority are unable to actually provide any accurate predictions. The political commenters who are very rigid in their beliefs were shown to make more mistakes (Sutherland, (2007), 95-103). This research shows the significance of being open minded and not dogmatic when it comes to belief systems, because being open to alternative understanding can improve one’s decision making ability and thereby lead to fewer errors. A conformation bias that we as individuals fall victim to is that regarding self-image. People tend to be more responsive to view’s that support their own view of their current self-image .For example if an individual thinks he or she is weak at math’s , then that individual is more likely to be more aware of and responsive to comments and views which suggest that . Many suggestions have been provided to explain this phenomenon. One is that we humans tend to use heuristics, which are mental short cuts to deal with problems. When using these short cuts we tend to only perceive a very narrow range of solutions, that is those which are most easily generated using prior knowledge, which in this case happens to be individual belief systems.  Also we humans have been shown to take part in wishful thinking. This leads to the frequency of pleasant thoughts being greater compared to unpleasant ones. Moreover humans favor consistency that is coherence in their attitudes towards life. Therefore we may be less likely to approach problems in life with a neutral perspective and thereby leading us to wrongfully judge novel information. An understanding that Tetlock gained from his research on political commenters further explains why we don’t notice our biases. We tend to surround ourselves with people who have similar value systems, similar beliefs and similar levels of knowledge. For example at work the people that a person associates will most likely have the same level qualifications. Therefore people are rarely pushed to think outside of the box that is in unorthodox ways that might shed some light on one’s decision making and behavior errors (Lindzey,(2010),p211) .