3 Most Common Tips Concerning Cognitive Biases

The prism through which we view the world

I am always interested in how we manifest things in our lives. Manifestation being the ability of an individual to embrace, act, or have some person, place or thing, appear in this individual’s consciousness, and sensory awareness, and have this person, place or thing, appear in a specific and particular way.

At the most basic and obvious level the human mind makes notes of patterns — what psychologists call “pattern matching” or “pattern recognition”. These can cause us to become biased we ways we cannot even see.

Some of these patterns connect for us on an intuitive level while others connect to us on a left-brained, linear, and intellectual level.

I’ve always been fascinated by how people are motivated to make decisions.

With even a little investigation it is clear that we all unconsciously create biases that get implanted into our thinking patterns These can help or hinder us from doing what is wise and effective.

All we can ever really grab onto is a general definition of emotion — a capricious, elusive, and sensitive mental and physiological state associated with a wide variety of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. That’s it!

With all of this research and all of these experts, some of the questions that have yet to be answered definitively in relation to the emotions are:

• Can an individual experience an emotion without there being some corresponding behavior?

• If an individual is able to experience emotions without there being some corresponding behavior, would that indicate that this behavior is not essential to the emotion?

In my work as a strategist, and forecaster I often come across articles, stories, and videos, about people who have made poor decisions because they allowed their cognitive biases to interfere with their rational thinking.

A cognitive bias is a common term used to describe systematic patterns of deviation from the norm, or rationality in judgment.

There are almost 200 defined biases that have been isolated and defined by social scientists.

The 3 most common are:

1. The tendency to overestimate our abilities,

2. The instinct to fixate on the negatives,

3. …And cherry-picking data to confirm an already-determined world-view.

Individuals create their own “subjective reality” from their perception of the input. An individual’s construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality

While cognitive biases often have a negative influence, they can actually help us identify similarities and create shortcuts to navigate through common situations, and obstacles.

By exploring and even studying these biases you have the essential tools you will need for better and clearer critical thinking, and becoming more practical, effective, efficient, precise, productive, accurate, and self-aware — (PEEPPASA), in decision-making.

Many people struggle and suffer in life because they believe and have convinced themselves to believe that something is true, or fact though it isn’t.

If they do not discard their misguided intuition, or a wrong conclusion based on actual facts, it is not because their reasoning attempts to solve the problem that feeds a false conclusion. Rather, it is failing because their reasoning seeks to identify reasons that support their intuition, and belief. This tendency of reasoning to provide argument that reinforce a person’s prior beliefs or decisions is commonly referred to as a cognitive or confirmation bias.

Those psychologists that even address the issue of cognitive bias usually focus on a handful of biases, but there are actually many more than this. A skilled professional helper (coach, mentor, consultant, advisor, therapist), can identify these. This is especially so, within the field of cognitive behavioral therapy, rational-emotional therapy, and family therapy can be extremely effective in changing a person’s dysfunctional assumptions and ways of thinking.

In my development of my HAGT method (Harrison’s Applied Game Thinking), it became clear that the more rational a client is the more effective the counseling might be.

It is extremely difficult to achieve PEEPPASA when burdened down by cognitive biases. I often speak about PEEPPASA as an essential part of decision making, forecasting, and a self Improvement Lifestyle. I have found in my own life that any strategy I create that cannot meet a PEEPPASA standard has a greater chance of failure, and causing me unnecessary struggle.

In a sense, embracing and applying PEEPPASA makes you a bit of an expert concerning your own life.

Here is a Medium story you might enjoy @sgranted

Here’s one from the archives @LewisCoaches

Author: Lewis Harrison is an author, strategist, speaker, and a seminar leader. Lewis is the creator of the Ask Lewis Mentoring Method as well as HAGT — Harrison’s Applied Game Theory. He is the Executive Director of the International Association of Healing Professionals an educational organization that offers programs around the world in Intentional Living. He is also Independent Scholar, with a passion for knowledge, personal development, self-improvement, creativity, innovation, and problem-solving.

For a decade, Lewis was the host of a humor-based Q & A talk show on NPR (National Public Radio) affiliated WIOX FM in NY.