You hear me talk about cognitive biases a lot.
They affect everything from what sort of information be believe, what we like, who we hang out with and what we look for.
However, as intelligent readers of this blog, surely you are more aware of your biases and less biased than other people…
Right?
Well, unfortunately there is a bias we also suffer from, called the Bias Blind Spot, also known as the “Bias Bias”.
This bias shows that while we are often quick to recognise the biases in other people and the impact on their beliefs, we often cannot recognise the impact of our own biases.
In a 2002 Research paper, when studying more than 600 people in the USA, more than 85% believed they were less biased than the average American. Only one participant believed that they were more biased than the average American.
This finding has been replicated by another 2023 study of more than 969 people.
So even though after reading this and knowing about how all the other various biases may impact you, just knowing that is not enough.
You need to actively put in place measures to try and prevent the bias from impacting your thinking and decisions too much.
Because like it or not, you are probably more affected by your biases and heuristics than you are aware.
Nick Skillicorn
Latest posts by Nick Skillicorn (see all)
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- Pygmalion effect: The self-fulfilling prophecy - July 24, 2023
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