The Roots of Cognitive Bias Theory
The obstacle to predictive critical thinking
It is almost impossible to be an effective futurist if your mind distorts your critical thinking through cognitive bias.
The notion of cognitive biases was introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972, and grew out of their experience of people’s inability to reason intuitively with the greater orders of magnitude (innumeracy).
Tversky, Kahneman, and colleagues demonstrated several replicable ways in which human decisions and judgments differ from rational choice theory. Rational choice theory explains a set of guidelines that help understand social and social behavior. The theory originated in the eighteenth century and can be traced back to the philosophe and political economist, Adam Smith.
Tversky and Kahneman explained human differences in judgment and decision-making in terms of heuristics. Heuristics involve mental shortcuts which provide swift estimates about the possibility of uncertain occurrences. Heuristics are simple for the brain to compute, but sometimes introduce “severe and systematic errors.”
For example, the representativeness heuristic is defined as “The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood” of an occurrence by the extent of which the event “resembles the typical case”.
The “Linda Problem” illustrates the representativeness heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983). Participants were given a description of “Linda” that suggests Linda might well be a feminist (e.g., she is said to be concerned about discrimination and social justice issues). They were then asked whether they thought Linda was more likely to be
(a) a “bank teller” or (b) a “bank teller who is active in the feminist movement.” A majority chose answer (b). This error (mathematically, answer (b) ) cannot be more likely than answer (a)). This is an example of the “conjunction fallacy”; Tversky and Kahneman argued that respondents chose (b) because it seemed more “representative” or typical of persons who might fit the description of Linda. The representativeness heuristic (from loose trial and error) may lead to errors, such as activating stereotypes and inaccurate judgments of others.
One of the limitations of Kahneman and Tversky point of view, is that heuristics(trial and error) should not lead us to conceive of human thinking as riddled with irrational cognitive biases.
We, and predictive futurists in particular, should consider rationality, not as some genetic gift, but rather as an adaptive tool. Certainly not identical in any way to the rules of formal logic or the probability calculus. Nevertheless, experiments such as the “Linda problem” grew into heuristics and biases research programs, which spread beyond academic psychology into other disciplines including medicine and political science.
One of the main causes of cognitive bias is Noisy Information Processing. It comes about because of the brain’s limited capacity to process information. It also describes distortions during storage in and retrieval from memory.
For example, a 2012 Psychological Bulletin article suggests that at least eight seemingly unrelated biases can be produced by the same information-theoretic generative mechanism. The article shows that noisy deviations in the memory-based information processes that convert objective evidence (observations) into subjective estimates (decisions) can produce regressive conservatism, the belief revision (Bayesian conservatism), illusory correlations, illusory superiority (better-than-average effect) and worse-than-average effect, subaddivity effect, exaggerated expectation, overconfidence, and the hard–easy effect.
Biases can be distinguished on a number of dimensions. For a more complete list, see list of cognitive biases.
Examples of cognitive biases include biases…
• specific to groups (such as the risky shift) versus biases at the individual level.
• that affect decision-making, where the desirability of options has to be considered (e.g., sunk costs fallacy).
• such as illusory correlation, that affect judgment of how likely something is or whether one thing is the cause of another.
• that affect memory, these may include consistency bias (remembering one’s past attitudes and behavior as more similar to one’s present attitudes).
• that reflect a subject’s motivation, for example, the desire for a positive self-image leading to egocentric bias and the avoidance of unpleasant cognitive dissonance.
• due to ignoring relevant information (e.g., neglect of probability),
• that involve a decision or judgment being affected by irrelevant information (for example the framing effect where the same problem receives different responses depending on how it is described; or the distinction bias where choices presented together have different outcomes than those presented separately),
• that give excessive weight to an unimportant but salient feature of the problem,
• due to the particular way the brain perceives, forms memories and makes judgments. This distinction is sometimes described as “hot cognition” versus “cold cognition”, as motivated reasoning can involve a state of arousal. Among the “cold” biases,
The fact that some biases reflect motivation, specifically the motivation to have positive attitudes to oneself, accounts for the fact that many biases are self-serving or self-directed (e.g., illusion of asymmetric insight, self-serving bias). There are also biases in how subjects evaluate in-groups or out-groups; evaluating in-groups as more diverse and “better” in many respects, even when those groups are arbitrarily defined (ingroup bias, outgroup homogeneity bias).
Some cognitive biases belong to the subgroup of attentional biases, which refers to paying increased attention to certain stimuli. It has been shown, for example, that people addicted to alcohol and other drugs pay more attention to drug-related stimuli. Common psychological tests to measure those biases are the Stroop task and the dot probe task.
Individuals susceptibility to some types of cognitive biases can be measured by the Cognitive Reflection
Here is an interesting article @vinbhalerao
Here’s one from my futurist archives @Lewiscoaches
The article you have just read is an excerpt from my Course “The Self Improvement Lifestyle”. To learn more, email me at [email protected]
Author: Lewis Harrison is a professional futurist,and the creator of the HAGT Method (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 and a Results-Oriented Success Coach, with a passion for knowledge, personal development, self-improvement, creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. You can read all of his Medium stories at [email protected].
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.
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