It would be easy to think that all cognitive bias is a bad thing. When we hear people talking about it, it’s often in the context of the collection of biases that make up racism or sexism or other generally negative things. Yet, the truth is that cognitive bias is the way that our brain manages energy use and is overwhelmingly a positive thing for us.
Thinking is “expensive” in terms of how much energy it requires — the human brain constitutes on average 2% of a person’s total body weight but consumes about 20% of the energy a person expends while awake … making efficient use of our mind’s capacities by doing things more cheaply in the background makes a lot of adaptive and calorie-saving sense.
— Before you know it: The unconscious reasons we do what we do by John Bargh PhD
Our brains just don’t have the capacity to calculate every decision from first principles each time so they develop shortcuts. These shortcuts are what we call Cognitive Biases and most of the time they’re extremely helpful.
Cognitive Bias is part of Daniel Kahneman’s System 1, where speed is more important than accuracy. In other words, System 1 is very fast, and often wrong.
It’s when our cognitive biases are wrong, that we run into problems. We have no conscious control over the answers that our brain comes up with and it requires actual effort from System 2 to overcome those biases. Effort that is energy intensive and difficult to sustain when we are feeling stressed or unsafe1.
It’s not the fact that we have biases that is the problem. The problem is when those biases give us an incorrect answer and we aren’t able to detect that fact. When we take action that is wrong or misguided as a result of that bias.
System 1 can only do its job of delivering strong conclusions at lightning speed if it never pauses to wonder whether the evidence at hand is flawed or inadequate, or if there is better evidence elsewhere. It must treat the available evidence as reliable and sufficient
— Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock, Dan Gardner
Understanding our biases, is a good step towards being able to correct when those biases give us wrong or misguided answers. We also need to recognize that we are less likely to detect incorrect answers when we are stressed or feeling unsafe.
Science has classified hundreds of different cognitive biases and this excellent diagram by John Manoogian III, gives an organized view into them. It’s worth learning about some of these so that we can better recognize when we’re making sub-optimal decisions.
Hint: Zoom in for more detail
The more aware we are of our own thinking, the more likely we’ll make better decisions.
See more on specific cognitive biases:
- Choice blindness
- Social proof in meetings
- Survivor Bias
- Fixation errors
- Outcome bias (Resulting)
- Inattentional blindness
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If we are feeling unsafe then we have less access to the prefrontal cortex and less ability to use System 2. See the SAFETY model of psychological safety and also Polyvagal Theory. ↩