The Normalcy bias, a form of cognitive dissonance, is the refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.; Effort justification is a person's tendency to attribute greater value to an outcome if they had to put effort into achieving it. This can result in more value being applied to an outcome than it actually has.
Cognitive biases are inherent in the way we think, and many of them are unconscious. Identifying the biases you experience and purport in your everyday interactions is the first step to understanding how our mental processes work, which can help us make better, more informed decisions.
Updated March 31, 2022 | Published June 22, 2021. Updated March 31, 2022. Published June 22, 2021
Understanding these biases is very helpful in learning how they can lead us to poor decisions in life.
The confirmation bias is the tendency to listen more often to information that confirms our existing beliefs. Through this bias, people tend to favor information that reinforces the things they already think or believe.
While people like to believe that they are rational and logical, the fact is that people are continually under the influence of cognitive biases. These biases distort thinking, influence beliefs, and sway the decisions and judgments that people make each and every day. Sometimes these biases are fairly obvious, ...
The optimism bias has roots in the availability heuristic. Because you can probably think of examples of bad things happening to other people it seems more likely that others will be affected by negative events.
It also helps people avoid experiencing cognitive dissonance, which involves holding contradictory beliefs. This cognitive bias can have a powerful impact in the real world. For example, job applicants perceived as attractive and likable are also more likely to be viewed as competent, smart, and qualified for the job.
The effect of this bias is that it causes us to overestimate our ability to predict events. This can sometimes lead people to take unwise risks.
The hindsight bias occurs for a combination of reasons, including our ability to "misremember" previous predictions, our tendency to view events as inevitable, and our tendency to believe we could have foreseen certain events. The effect of this bias is that it causes us to overestimate our ability to predict events.
"The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world." - George Orwell
To this end, acknowledging bias is understanding the limitations of oneself. Prominent examples are gender bias and racial bias, which are often rooted in our societies, and can be deeply buried in our subconscious.
The disciplinary bias of modern science thus creates a deeply normative methodological bias, which some disciplines may try to take into account yet others clearly not. In other words, the dogmatic selection of methods within disciplines has the potential to create deep flaws in empirical research, and we need to be aware and reflexive about this. The largest bias concerning methods is the choice of methods per se. A critical perspective is thus not only of relevance from a perspective of societal responsibility, but equally from a view on the empirical. Clear documentation and reproducibility of research are important but limited stepping stones in a critique of the methodological. This cannot replace a critical perspective, but only amends it. Empirical knowledge will only look at parts - or strata according to Roy Bhaskar - of reality, yet philosophy can offer a generalisable perspective or theory, and Critical Theory, Critical Realism as well as other current developments of philosophy can be seen as a thriving towards an integrated and holistic philosophy of science, which may ultimately link to an overaching theory of ethics (Parfit). If the empirical and the critical inform us, then both a philosophy of science and ethics may tell us how we may act based on our perceptions of reality.
Recognising bias in research is highly relevant, because bias exposes the myth of objectivity of research and enables a better recognition and reflection of our flaws and errors. In addition, one could add that understanding bias in science is relevant beyond the empirical, since bias can also highlight flaws in our perceptions and actions as humans. To this end, acknowledging bias is understanding the limitations of oneself. Prominent examples are gender bias and racial bias, which are often rooted in our societies, and can be deeply buried in our subconscious. I think it is our responsibility to learn about the diverse biases we have, yet it is beyond this text to explore the subjective human bias we need to overcome. Just so much about the ethics of bias: many would argue that overcoming our biases requires the ability to learn and question our privileges. Within research we need to recognise that science has been severely and continuously biased against ethnic minorities, women, and many other groups. Institutional and systemic bias are part of the current reality of the system, and I believe that we need to do our utmost to change this - there is a need for debiasing science, and our own actions. While it should not go unnoticed that institutions and systems did already change, injustices and inequalities still exist. Most research is conducted in the global north, posing a neo-colonialistic problem that we are far from solving. Much of academia is still far away from having a diverse understanding of people, and systemic and institutional discrimination are parts of our daily reality. We are on the path of a very long journey, and there is much to be done concerning bias in constructed institutions.
The last and by far most complex point is the root theories associated to bias. Reason, social contract and utilitarianism are the three key theories of Western philosophy relevant for empiricism, and all biases can be at least associated to one of these three foundational theories. Many cognitive bias are linked to reason or unreasonable behaviour. Much of bias relates to prejudices and society can be linked to the wide field of social contract. Lastly, some bias is clearly associated with utilitarianism. Surprisingly, utilitarianism is associated to a low amount of bias, yet it should be noted that the problem of causality within economical analysis is still up for debate. Much of economic management is rooted in correlative understandings, which are often mistaken for clear-cut causal relations. Psychology also clearly illustrates that investigating a bias is different from unconsciously inferring a bias into your research. Consciousness of bias is the basis for its recognition: if you are not aware of bias, you cannot take it into account regarding your knowledge production. While it thus seems not directly helpful to associate empirical research and its biases to the three general foundational theories of philosophy - reason, social contract and utilitatrianism -, we should still take this into account, least of all at it leads us to one of the most important developments of the 20th century: Critical Theory.
We are all biased, because we are individuals with individual experiences, and are unconnected from other individuals and/or groups, or at least think we are unconnected.
At the heart of critical theory is the focus on critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to only observing or explaining it. Originating in Marx, Critical Theory consists of a clear distancing from previous theories in philosophy - or associated with the social - that try to understand or explain.
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Understanding these biases is very helpful in learning how they can lead us to poor decisions in life.
The confirmation bias is the tendency to listen more often to information that confirms our existing beliefs. Through this bias, people tend to favor information that reinforces the things they already think or believe.
While people like to believe that they are rational and logical, the fact is that people are continually under the influence of cognitive biases. These biases distort thinking, influence beliefs, and sway the decisions and judgments that people make each and every day. Sometimes these biases are fairly obvious, ...
The optimism bias has roots in the availability heuristic. Because you can probably think of examples of bad things happening to other people it seems more likely that others will be affected by negative events.
It also helps people avoid experiencing cognitive dissonance, which involves holding contradictory beliefs. This cognitive bias can have a powerful impact in the real world. For example, job applicants perceived as attractive and likable are also more likely to be viewed as competent, smart, and qualified for the job.
The effect of this bias is that it causes us to overestimate our ability to predict events. This can sometimes lead people to take unwise risks.
The hindsight bias occurs for a combination of reasons, including our ability to "misremember" previous predictions, our tendency to view events as inevitable, and our tendency to believe we could have foreseen certain events. The effect of this bias is that it causes us to overestimate our ability to predict events.