My Mind is Playing Tricks on Me: How Cognitive Bias is Ruining Your Thinking
Yes, your mind is playing tricks on you!
The human mind is the most powerful information processing apparatus we have. Yet the mind is still prone to errors in thinking, which we all experience, resulting in poor decision-making, and sub-optimal outcomes. For leaders and managers whose very job is to make accurate judgment calls and decisions, these errors risk your and your organization’s success. Yes, your mind is playing tricks on you! And left unchecked, you could end up like the Ghetto Boys in the video above.
While Unconscious Bias has gotten the lion’s share of attention, how to address it is still misunderstood. And there are other equally prevalent and problematic biases that require our attention.
Overcoming these cognitive glitches starts with understanding the various forms they take, recognizing which you are most susceptible to and using this awareness to put in place safeguards against them.
The shortest point between A and B
Let’s first understand what is at the root of all cognitive biases. Energy conservation. Humans are energy conservers, meaning we seek to save energy wherever possible. While the human brain makes up only 2 percent of our body weight, it accounts for 20 percent of our total energy use. During a typical day a person burns about 320 calories just from thinking. So in trying to find the shortest point between A and B, our minds create short-cuts to reduce any unnecessary energy expenditure. While energy efficient, these short-cuts create inaccuracies in our thinking.
What is a bias?
A bias is any predictable error that inclines your judgment in a particular direction. While there are many types of cognitive biases, I’m going to focus on those I’ve encountered most frequently as a psychotherapist and executive coach that pose the biggest threat to quality thinking, decisions, and outcomes. Here they are:
Unconscious Bias
Unconscious Bias refers to the unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups based on stereotypes of those groups. These beliefs drive our behaviors and decisions without our being consciously aware of them. For example, our unconscious comfort level with members of a certain group (by gender, race, sexual orientation, etc.) results in our showing preferences for or against members of that group in interviewing and hiring processes without thinking we are. And we tend to be more comfortable with people who are like us and those we’ve spent significant time getting to know.
So, if this is unconscious, how do we know if we have a bias here? On some level we probably do know. If we honestly assess what beliefs we hold about certain groups and how those beliefs impact our assessment of members of that group we can override our unconscious bias. If you need external assistance, researchers have designed assessments like the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to help measure attitudes and beliefs that you may be unable to identify on your own. There are tests that help show implicit beliefs and preferences with a variety of identity categories including race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, weight and others. To identify what unconscious biases you might have you can take the test on-line through Harvard’s Project Implicit.
With the growing recognition of Unconscious Bias as a problem in interviewing, hiring, and promotion in corporate America many companies have begun to implement Unconscious Bias (UB) training, which is a positive step forward. However, many of these trainings have had questionable results. A review of more than 700 companies offering Unconscious Bias training showed the likelihood that Black men and women would advance in those organizations often decreased. Not the result you would expect or hope to see.
A recent HBR article looked at Unconscious Bias training programs that got better results and noted the following keys to success:
“The most effective UB training does more than increase awareness of bias and its impact. It teaches attendees to manage their biases, change their behavior, and track their progress. It gives them information that contradicts stereotypes and allows them to connect with people whose experiences are different from theirs. And it’s not just a onetime education session; it entails a longer journey and structural changes to policies and operations—like the standardization of hiring processes, the elimination of self-assessments from performance reviews, and the institution of incentives for improving diversity.”
Changing behavior, especially when it stems from the unconscious, requires us to examine, challenge and ultimately change our belief systems. Since these belief systems have taken a lifetime to form they take commitment and time to change.
Confirmation Bias
This is probably the laziest and most wishful thinking of our cognitive biases. It goes like this, when we would like a certain idea or concept to be true, we overweight evidence that confirms that idea while shunning evidence that might disprove it. This makes us feel like we were open-minded and did our due diligence while in reality we were just being expedient, building the case for what we wanted to be true all along. And this is also where social media and the infamous algorithms do such a good job of creating confirmation bias echo chambers.
In order to overcome this bias we need to take the time and effort to consult a diversity of viewpoints, surround ourselves with people who have differing opinions, and encourage others around us to offer dissenting opinions (while ensuring that these opinions are valued rather than treated as attacks or punished as insubordination if you’re in charge). You need to get comfortable doing the extra mental work required to overcome this bias.
The next time you find yourself going into a decision with a pre-existing opinion try these safeguards against confirmation bias:
Seek out someone you respect who has a differing point of view on the issue and ask them to walk you through their thinking.
Assign team members to play Devil’s Advocate when you meet to discuss the issue, especially if everyone is agreeing on the same course of action.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
Named after social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, this cognitive bias refers to the overestimation of one’s skills and capabilities. Once we gain a relatively small amount of knowledge in an area in which we previously knew very little, we believe we know more than we actually do in that area. We’ve seen this a lot over the last two years with regards to epidemiology and COVID and foreign policy and international security in Afghanistan and Ukraine. A couple of hours on Facebook does not make you an expert!
There are also a few variations to the standard Dunning-Kruger effect that show up:
Because we are highly competent at one thing, we believe this makes us competent in another thing, even though different training and expertise are called for.
We believe that things we don’t know much about which are quite complex are actually simple and thereby discount the opinions of those who have expertise in that area. These above two reasons are why I don’t take medical advice from athletes and politicians.
A good rule of thumb to avoid falling into this cognitive trap is to assume that unless you, or the people who tend to opine on various topics, have extensive training in that area seek out real expertise.
Noise
Noise refers to errors distinguished by their variability where we want consistency. A recent example from my own life was trying to decide if I’m going to make three trips to the east coast in the span of a couple of weeks. One day I’m feeling particularly social and energetic and I’m excited about going on all three trips. The next day after a lousy night sleep I’m like “no way” I don’t want to go to any of these. This is noise.
What causes noise? Mood, our current emotional state, fatigue, and studies have shown that even weather can play a role.
Systems can be noisy too. The noisiest systems are the ones that rely most on individual interpretations where we expect consistency. These systems include the criminal justice system with sentencing decisions made by individual judges and the insurance industry with how underwriters determine premium values. Without enough standardization and monitoring in these systems, individual decision-makers bring too much of their own biases, beliefs, and tendencies to decisions that should be consistent throughout the system.
Consider how unacceptable levels of noise show up in your decision-making and organization and use these suggestions to mitigate it.
“Sleep on it” - To ensure you are not reacting from an overly emotional state, hold off on sending that email or having a conversation while you are upset. Ask yourself is this what I would do 10 out of 10 times? If not, do what you need to do to get perspective, clarify what you want to say or do, and then respond from that place of groundedness.
Use Averages - To offset noise, use the average of a decision. You can do this both for yourself and in your organization. Going back to my travel decision, I made a choice every day for a week and then used the average to make a decision that wasn’t based on how I was feeling on any one day. In your organization you can average the opinions from a number of team members (a frequent practice in forecasting) to offset noisiness.
Standardize Processes - Ensure appropriate standardization of processes in your organization such as structured interview guidelines in hiring and clear criteria for evaluation and promotions.
You can learn more about noise in Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment.
Recency Bias
Recency Bias is the tendency to remember the most recently presented information or experience best.
I have seen this with leaders who are overly influenced by the last advisor, mentor, board member, or customer they talked to. That conversation becomes the new direction they passionately evangelize until the next conversation occurs and they switch to that new plan. It makes them seem erratic, easily influenced, and drives everyone around them nuts since they are always changing course.
By understanding this bias and how our memory works we can be more explicit about taking a more measured approach. If you are a leader with a tendency toward this bias you can safeguard yourself and organization by instituting a planning and goal setting process to fall back on when the temptation to change course arises. As a manager you can counter your tendency to evaluate your direct report’s performance based on the prior 3-4 months rather than the entire year by implementing a continuous, quarterly or semi-annual review process.
Spotlight Bias
We have a tendency to overestimate how much other people notice about us. In other words, we tend to think there’s a spotlight on us, highlighting all of our mistakes or flaws, for all the world to see. However, most people are not as focused on us as we think.
So, if you are overly worried about how others view you and this influences your decisions and actions you may be falling victim to the Spotlight Bias. You are likely overestimating the extent to which they will associate you with the decision at all. And you can alleviate your worry by knowing that those people you are worried about judging you are more than likely overly focused on the spotlight being on them.
Cognitive Behavioral thought distortions
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) holds that our emotional suffering comes from distortions in our thinking. In addition to being at the root of our depression, anxiety and other mental health issues, these distortions also lead us to make poor judgements, decisions and often lead to suboptimal outcomes. CBT treatment focuses on identifying and intervening against these distorted thought patterns:
All or nothing thinking - This is the tendency to categorize things into absolutes. Situations are viewed as black or white without the nuances and complexities being considered. However, usually the reality of things as well as the solutions to your most tenacious challenges are found in the gray.
Overgeneralization - This is drawing conclusions that because an outcome happened once it will occur again. Saying an idea or strategy that didn’t work will never work again is an example of overgeneralization..
Mental filter - This is the filtering out of the whole picture, especially anything positive. A manager in one company told me that since the company leadership are engineers by training there’s a tendency to find problems, even where they don’t exist.
Disqualifying the positive - This is a more active version of the mental filter where we turn positives into negatives. “We just closed our biggest deal yet!” says the sales leader. “Why wasn’t it bigger?” responds the critical CEO or Board Member.
Jumping to conclusions - We do this primarily in two ways: a) mind-reading, where we believe we know what others are thinking; and b) fortune-telling where we predict worst-case scenarios that are unlikely to happen.
Magnification and minimization - This is where we magnify errors and minimize strengths and accomplishments.
Emotional reasoning - Here we are led by our emotions and use how we feel as evidence of truth. Hedge fund founder and management expert Ray Dalio implores you to “reconcile your feelings and your thinking. For most people,” he says, “life is a never-ending battle between these two parts of the brain”.
Should statements - These types of statements cause us to feel pressured and resentful of ourselves and others. One of my favorite sayings is “don’t should on yourself!”
Labeling and mislabeling - An extreme form of overgeneralization, here we make something or someone completely negative based on one part being wrong. We often see this with leaders who write employees off as as “incompetent” because they made a mistake, or a number of mistakes, even if they’ve added value elsewhere.
Personalization - Here we take on responsibility for a negative event without it being warranted. A refrain I commonly hear is, “If my team didn’t do it right it is my fault and I must be a bad leader”. While this is a valiant and well-meaning gesture of accountability, when we confuse having influence over something with having complete control over it we have gone too far.
Like a funhouse mirror, our thinking distorts what is actually there. Learn more about these thought distortions and CBT in Dr. David Burns’ wonderful book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy.
Time to start debugging your mind
Correcting these biases starts with the awareness that they exist. In my experience, each of us is more prone to some biases than others. We each have a set of default biases. What are yours? When you consider both magnitude and frequency, which of the biases above pose the biggest threat to the quality of your thinking? Once you identify them you can start debugging your mind by implementing the suggestions I offer. What you stand to gain is the vast improvement in the clarity and quality of your thinking, decisions and outcomes.
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