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Cognitive bias / Understanding Bias: An intro to Debiasing
Understanding Bias: An intro to Debiasing
Topic: Cognitive bias
by David, 2021 Cohort
People generally believe that they are mostly rational in their thinking, decisions, and actions. But unknowingly, people often commit cognitive errors as they make decisions.
Cognitive Biases#
Our brains have way too much information coming in, more information than the millions of recognizers in our brain can handle, and because of that we take shortcuts. These shortcuts are called Cognitive Biases.
Why it’s important?
Some of these biases can be related to your memory. The way you remember place, time or event may be biased for several reasons and that can lead to biased thinking and decision-making. Other cognitive biases could be related to issues with attention. Since attention is limited, people must be selective about what they pay attention to.
Types of Biases
Overconfidence bias: The tendency for a person to overestimate their abilities.
Anchoring Bias: People’s initial focus on the very first piece of information they learn means that they fail to properly adjust their judgements as new and different information arises. For example, if you learn the average price for a car is a certain value, you will think any amount below that is a good deal.
How to Debias#
Debiasing in action
A project Manager meets with their project team and needs to get estimates on how long each task will take the team members to complete.
(Awareness) The project manager realises that if they ask for estimates from each team member then their estimates will most likely be incorrect subjected to the Anchoring Bias, impacted by each other’s estimates, relying on the first person who gives an estimate. And, impacted by their Overconfidence bias.
(Decision) The project manager decides to take a different approach.
(Analysis) The project manager determines that the biases will happen upon estimation and that estimates within members might differ and be incorrect due to people’s overconfidence of their time and ability.
(Planning) The project manager thinks about ways to mitigate the biases. Decides to remove the concept of time in the estimates to address the Overconfidence Bias and decides to find an approach where all team members estimate at the same time.
(Action) The project manager comes up with a solution called planning poker. In planning poker, members of the team make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table, instead of speaking them aloud. The cards are revealed, and the estimates are then discussed. By hiding the figures in this way, the team can avoid the anchoring bias, where the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates. Additionally, it can avoid the overconfidence bias by removing the concept of time and using numbers with allocated differences between them, to estimate instead.
Summary#
Cognitive biases affect every area of our life, from how we shape our knowledge and beliefs to how we interact with other people. So, it is important to be able to be aware of these biases and be able to debias them.
Explore this topic further#
Return to
Cognitive bias in the Primer
Disclaimer#
This content has been contributed by a student as part of a learning activity.
If there are inaccuracies, or opportunities for significant improvement on this topic, feedback is welcome on how to improve the resource.
You can improve articles on this topic as a student in "Unravelling Complexity", or by including the amendments in an email to: Chris.Browne@anu.edu.au
People generally believe that they are mostly rational in their thinking, decisions, and actions. But unknowingly, people often commit cognitive errors as they make decisions.
Cognitive Biases#
Our brains have way too much information coming in, more information than the millions of recognizers in our brain can handle, and because of that we take shortcuts. These shortcuts are called Cognitive Biases.
Why it’s important?
Some of these biases can be related to your memory. The way you remember place, time or event may be biased for several reasons and that can lead to biased thinking and decision-making. Other cognitive biases could be related to issues with attention. Since attention is limited, people must be selective about what they pay attention to.
Types of Biases
Overconfidence bias: The tendency for a person to overestimate their abilities.
Anchoring Bias: People’s initial focus on the very first piece of information they learn means that they fail to properly adjust their judgements as new and different information arises. For example, if you learn the average price for a car is a certain value, you will think any amount below that is a good deal.
How to Debias#
Debiasing in action
A project Manager meets with their project team and needs to get estimates on how long each task will take the team members to complete.
(Awareness) The project manager realises that if they ask for estimates from each team member then their estimates will most likely be incorrect subjected to the Anchoring Bias, impacted by each other’s estimates, relying on the first person who gives an estimate. And, impacted by their Overconfidence bias.
(Decision) The project manager decides to take a different approach.
(Analysis) The project manager determines that the biases will happen upon estimation and that estimates within members might differ and be incorrect due to people’s overconfidence of their time and ability.
(Planning) The project manager thinks about ways to mitigate the biases. Decides to remove the concept of time in the estimates to address the Overconfidence Bias and decides to find an approach where all team members estimate at the same time.
(Action) The project manager comes up with a solution called planning poker. In planning poker, members of the team make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table, instead of speaking them aloud. The cards are revealed, and the estimates are then discussed. By hiding the figures in this way, the team can avoid the anchoring bias, where the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates. Additionally, it can avoid the overconfidence bias by removing the concept of time and using numbers with allocated differences between them, to estimate instead.
Summary#
Cognitive biases affect every area of our life, from how we shape our knowledge and beliefs to how we interact with other people. So, it is important to be able to be aware of these biases and be able to debias them.