Five Types of Cognitive Bias and How they Affect Us

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Our knowledge, our experience, and our way of learning are three different things. How does each of these influence our worldview?

Five Types of Cognitive Bias and How they Affect Us
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Reading time 4 minutes
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Our perceptions and preconceptions bias the way we approach knowledge.

We all have an opinion. Ideally, our perspective is based on knowledge, logic, and reasoning. However, how we perceive these variables could be blocking us from using them correctly in most cases.

In previous articles we have written about how confirmation bias is a serious obstacle to objectivity when approaching new information, but this “hypo” cognition is not the only one that makes us stumble in our quest to be objective and analytical about a determined topic.

If we talk about the current situation of the global pandemic, where it is increasingly difficult to obtain accurate information and trust the experts, it becomes critical that we are aware of how and when our cognitive biases appear. It is crucial to identify and remove them from our thought process to understand the extended pandemic situation and cope with it.

Types of biases

1. Optimistic Bias

Optimistic bias is the tendency to see the future as invariably more positive than the past and the present. This can be useful in reducing stress levels and building a state of mind that enables us to overcome challenges, but it can also be risky in situations of widespread danger, like sexist violence at the national level in a country, or a global pandemic.

This cognitive mechanism leads us to dissociate ourselves from negative events and see them as distant occurrences, far from our reality. For example, we know that COVID-19 contagion upon leaving our homes is a possibility, but we do not think it could happen to us or someone close to us until it does happen.

This is undoubtedly one of the most difficult biases to detect and eliminate, especially because it is not always necessary to remove it from our thought process. The difficulty lies in developing the discernment to understand when being optimistic is beneficial versus when it is something more risky than positive.

2. Confirmation Bias

This kind of bias happens upon finding new information that contradicts something that we knew previously. Our first reaction is to defend our point of view. In previous articles, we have discussed adverse reactions when admitting errors or mistakes. This is what leads to confirmation bias.

When we fall into confirmation bias, it is because we are reading or interpreting new information under the lens of our own beliefs and prior knowledge, so that the new information confirms rather than contradicts what we believe. For example, presenting a series of numbers and asking for the rule that explains how these numbers are organized might put our preconceptions into play.

3. The Effect of Disinformation

We usually believe that there is no better way to know something than to experience it; however, our memory can change the experience. The disinformation bias happens when we try to remember an event faithfully, but what we remember is not the event itself, but the result of how we process it.

Our memory tends to be more influenced by what happens after the event than the occurrence itself; what counts is how we construct the memory of the event. Studies show that both the way information is presented and the stimuli present at the time the memory is created can compromise it and make it less accurate.

4. The Actor vs. Observer Bias

When explaining the actions of others and ourselves, it seems that sometimes we use different criteria. We constantly encounter people who are very demanding of themselves and indulgent with others or vice-versa; this is the Actor vs. Observer bias or attribution bias.

Usually, when we talk about ourselves and our faults, we look for external causes to explain our shortfalls. However, if it is someone else, we find it easier to resort to finding internal causes. For example, if we arrive late to a meeting, we might try to explain it by blaming a flight delay or heavy traffic. If it is someone else who is late, we tend to think it happened because of his actions, not because of events beyond his control. For example, we say that the person fell asleep, or that he forgot the time of the meeting.

The converse also applies, where a person explains a fault of their own based on their actions and the failures of others based on external factors.

5. The heuristics of availability

This bias happens when our exposure to a certain issue makes us underestimate or overestimate its recidivism. For example, if only 20 car thefts happen a year in a city, but five of them happen in your neighborhood over two months, you might think the number of car thefts is higher than it is. Giving another example, suppose that during your entire career, you never witnessed any instance of sexism or sexual harassment in the college where you work. You might think that sexism is not such a severe problem in the universities and that people who sustain that it is a serious situation are exaggerating.

We calculate the quantity or recurrence of a certain event or object within the framework of our perceptions. We use mental shortcuts that help us to assess risks and benefits quickly, but these assessments depend entirely on our perceptions, which could be biased, incomplete, or mistaken.

These biases are especially risky when we try to evaluate and formulate responses to situations like a global pandemic or prolonged confinement. In order not to fall into using mental crutches, we must be self-critical, check the information we receive, and, above all, not assume that our perspectives or our experiences are the norms when learning or expressing an opinion about something.

Have you or your students encountered any of these biases in your learning process? Tell us in the comments.

Translation by Daniel Wetta.

Sofía García-Bullé

This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0