Cognitive biases: How our brain make himself guilty of our believes - INTRODUCTION to the cognitive psychology - 1/3
Ladies and gentlemen, times are hard; our brains are taking the control. I repeat: our brains are taking the control! Be careful, they are clever than us and use tricky methods to fool our vigilance. Again, pay attention or you’ll die alone.
Seriously, today I wanted to talk you about biases. You ignore what are they? Don’t worry I’m here to help you and together reduce their impact in our daily life. So first, what are they? Biases are misleading thinking pattern, falsely logic which affect everyone, despite ourselves. It’s a natural mechanism which occurs systematically and subconsciously. They false our judgment in many ways. We bring them together in 5 groups:
They are due to the limits of our brain, in term of memory and information treatment. In fact, too much information, not enough time, meaning or memory are factors which make our brain panic. And it has a huge need of understanding, so it does shortcuts to make sense, whatever the consequences.
In addition, our ways of communication are limited in several aspects. According to commercials discourse only 10 % of the information you want to transmit is integrate by those who are listening to you. The percentage must be superior, but it highlights the incredible loss of information in oral discussions. To convince yourself, think about your childhood and particularly an easy game, the “Chinese whispers”. The rules are very simple: players form a line, the first player comes up with a message and whispers it to the ear of the second person in the line. The second player repeats the message to the third player, and so on. When the last player is reached, they announce the message they heard to the entire group. The first person then compares the original message with the final version. What’s funny, and you probably already experienced it, is that the initial message became gibberish during the process. Our mind is also reduce by the language we speak; a poor vocabulary is only able to describe a small part of all the emotions and ideas we want to express. Lastly our communications are full of innuendos, through humor with the irony, or expressions. By what miracle can we agree about the meaning of expressions like: “it rains cats and dogs”?!
The complexity of our communications and all our environment are fascinating scientific domains. Social psychology is often conceived to be the study of how individuals perceive, influence, and relate to others: how we interact with each other. In brain studying, cognitive sciences have a fundamental role. Among them cognitive psychology examines internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language. These studies are highly interdisciplinary: neuroscience, linguistic, philosophy and even computer science. Actually, cognitive biases were identified for the first time in economic sector by 2 psychology researchers, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. In the early 70’s, they wanted to figure economic choices paradox out. Indeed they observed and named the first cognitive bias: The sunk cost effect.
It happens when someone invest himself (time or money) in a project. We observe that he often keep investing although the project is failing. This cognitive distortion come from the desire of our brain to don’t waste what is already given. If it seems rational, it’s falsely logic. In fact, it shouldn’t consider the past losses but the future’s ones. It’s easy to mock stressed economists but it affects each of us. Think for example, to this sunny holidays you organized. Specially, when cats and dogs came, and you didn’t renounced pretending that was a detail: sunk cost effect. Or this sport subscription which make you suffer so much: sunk cost effect.
I hope you are realizing now how important they are. The positive point is that they occurs systematically and subconsciously, so fool me once, fool me twice… In my next post, we’ll talk about their advantages and what they bring to us.
Xavier.
Sources :
Seriously, today I wanted to talk you about biases. You ignore what are they? Don’t worry I’m here to help you and together reduce their impact in our daily life. So first, what are they? Biases are misleading thinking pattern, falsely logic which affect everyone, despite ourselves. It’s a natural mechanism which occurs systematically and subconsciously. They false our judgment in many ways. We bring them together in 5 groups:
- Attention biases
- Memory biases
- Decision-making and behavioral biases
- Biases in probability and belief
- Social biases
They are due to the limits of our brain, in term of memory and information treatment. In fact, too much information, not enough time, meaning or memory are factors which make our brain panic. And it has a huge need of understanding, so it does shortcuts to make sense, whatever the consequences.
In addition, our ways of communication are limited in several aspects. According to commercials discourse only 10 % of the information you want to transmit is integrate by those who are listening to you. The percentage must be superior, but it highlights the incredible loss of information in oral discussions. To convince yourself, think about your childhood and particularly an easy game, the “Chinese whispers”. The rules are very simple: players form a line, the first player comes up with a message and whispers it to the ear of the second person in the line. The second player repeats the message to the third player, and so on. When the last player is reached, they announce the message they heard to the entire group. The first person then compares the original message with the final version. What’s funny, and you probably already experienced it, is that the initial message became gibberish during the process. Our mind is also reduce by the language we speak; a poor vocabulary is only able to describe a small part of all the emotions and ideas we want to express. Lastly our communications are full of innuendos, through humor with the irony, or expressions. By what miracle can we agree about the meaning of expressions like: “it rains cats and dogs”?!
The complexity of our communications and all our environment are fascinating scientific domains. Social psychology is often conceived to be the study of how individuals perceive, influence, and relate to others: how we interact with each other. In brain studying, cognitive sciences have a fundamental role. Among them cognitive psychology examines internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language. These studies are highly interdisciplinary: neuroscience, linguistic, philosophy and even computer science. Actually, cognitive biases were identified for the first time in economic sector by 2 psychology researchers, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. In the early 70’s, they wanted to figure economic choices paradox out. Indeed they observed and named the first cognitive bias: The sunk cost effect.
It happens when someone invest himself (time or money) in a project. We observe that he often keep investing although the project is failing. This cognitive distortion come from the desire of our brain to don’t waste what is already given. If it seems rational, it’s falsely logic. In fact, it shouldn’t consider the past losses but the future’s ones. It’s easy to mock stressed economists but it affects each of us. Think for example, to this sunny holidays you organized. Specially, when cats and dogs came, and you didn’t renounced pretending that was a detail: sunk cost effect. Or this sport subscription which make you suffer so much: sunk cost effect.
I hope you are realizing now how important they are. The positive point is that they occurs systematically and subconsciously, so fool me once, fool me twice… In my next post, we’ll talk about their advantages and what they bring to us.
Xavier.
Sources :
1-
article comment notre cerveau
nous manipule-t-il par Sciences et Avenir from
https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/sante/cerveau-et-psy/comment-notre-cerveau-nous-manipule-t-il_135688
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Wikipedia
contributors. (2020, April 8). Cognitive bias. In Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia.
Retrieved 21:20, April 13, 2020, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cognitive_bias&oldid=949755653
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Wikipedia
contributors. (2020, April 10). Chinese whispers. In Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia.
Retrieved 21:21, April 13, 2020, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chinese_whispers&oldid=950150280
4-
article introduction to
social psychology par Wikia.org from
https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_social_psychology
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Wikipedia
contributors. (2020, April 2). Sunk cost. In Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia.
Retrieved 21:23, April 13, 2020, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sunk_cost&oldid=948642524
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Wikipedia
contributors. (2020, March 29). Nudge theory. In Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia.
Retrieved 21:23, April 13, 2020, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nudge_theory&oldid=947902181
Well, you say a lot but something intrigue me, if God is merciful beyond our compression, our brain should be perfect. Them I think you are just trying to mislead us from the will of the Lord which is why you have to delete you pathetic post and repent. Furthermore I am absolutely sur I have never been affected by those pathetic bias and that it affect only mistrustful people like you. Goerge
ReplyDeleteWell, you say a lot but something intrigue me, you’re trying to have a skeptical approach but why did you choose an antic fable rather than a strong and rigorous institution, which saves lives and develop our comprehension of the world? I respect your believes but respect mine. Finally, admitting ours failing is hard and require courage, clairvoyance and humility. You have the right to live in an illusion. But it could lead you and those who you love trough dangers. My friend, we can’t blame those who refuse help. Have a nice day. Skeptically.
ReplyDelete