Cognitive biases course notes
We all have biases. Biases help us make quick decisions and helped us as an important survival mechanisms. Understanding our biases and using them to our advantage is the motive behind taking up the video course on cognitive biases.
Confirmation bias
Lets say you met with an accident due to negligent driving at some point in life and you survived. For the rest of your life, you will be quick to spot negligent drivers and even predict when they would fall from the bike. Two things happened to you in this situation
- Something happened to you which affected you emotionally
- Based on the past event, your mind is taking decisions
Thats the high level overview of confirmation bias. Lets look the advantages and disadvantages of confirmation bias.
** Advantages **
You can quickly infer that based on situation that the same set of actions give same results. You are sure of it and even go about spreading the word about your observation.
In professions like law, you can quickly get into the shoes of your client and offer legal services with confidence.
** Disadvantages **
You do not validate your data again. For instance, technogical advances would have offered better bikes which can be driven at higher speeds but you would be still believing that high speeds will only result in accidents.
Falsification is an important step to break confirmation bias. Instead of using the language that confirms the biased person, ask them why they are unsatisfied with the situation. While falsifying their data, they get better and come over their bias.
** Traits **
The person with confirmation bias exhibits the below behaviours
- Operate like an
echo chamber. Shows preference over the data points or stimuli - Does not take the risk of falsyfying his data or habits
- Exhibits
drawer effectwhere he shows only the hits and hides the misses - Practice selective recall of events/data
- Most of the decisions are memory based
- Design their methodology to make their thoughts to suceed. It could be a algorithm thats designed to maneur their thoughts and operate in that direction only.
- Occassionally make illusionary associations.
** Work around **
For people with conformation bias, they need to pair up with skeptics as they need good evidence.
Pareidolia
Pareidolia is about how we associate random shapes to something that we already familiar with. For example, we can identify familiar faces even in a packed crowd of people.
Humans have large brains, there is a center which is dedicated to recognizing faces and patterns.
** Advantages **
By observing patterns we can quickly arrive at a conclusion. Pareidolia makes dealing with large set of unpredictable stimuli easier. If something has sharp teeth and agressive, its a dangerous predator. If something has eyes to the side, its a prey.
Allows us to take snap decisions based on familiarity with the shape or pattern
** Disadvantages **
Relying on familiarity with patterns over organized knowledge or schemas is a risky behaviour.
When we lack social connect with humans which is our first choice, we tend to look for social connect with pets and anything that can be recognized as a face. For instance, a car with 2 lights and a grill looks like a human face and people tend to give it a human name or pet name.
** Work around **
Just like confirmation bias is about data, pareidolia is about patterns and affinity towards shapes. We need to be aware of it.