Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been lying low recently. Couple of reasons, with the new year I am thinking about what I really want to achieve in 2018, and if/how could this blog help me achieve some of those goals. So, this step back from regular posting and into deep thought has taken me to a few different and new places. One of those was to re-evaluate how I thought about and interpreted the world around me.
Through this I stumbled upon something called cognitive bias. I will admit that i know very little about the cognitive bias field, but some of the cognitive bias ideas that i read about have made me aware of my own swayed interpretations and for me awareness is the first step towards change. I’m only just delving into this, so let’s see where it takes me….
Anyway, this is a really powerful idea and I wanted to share with you an infographic that nicely highlights upon every cognitive bias. See the infographic below for full details, in short it hits on 4 key ideas. Take a read and see if the themes strike a chord with you:
1) What Should We Remember?
- We edit and reinforce some memories after the fact
- We discard specifics to form generalities
- We reduce events and lists to their key elements
- We store memories differently based on how we each experience them
2) We Need to Act Fast
- We favour simple-looking options and complete information over complex and ambiguous options
- To avoid mistakes, we aim to preserve autonomy and group status, and avoid irreversible decisions
- To get things done, we tend to complete things we’ve invested time and energy in
- To stay focused, we favour the immediate, relatable thing in front of us
- To act, we must be confident we can make an impact and feel what we do is important
3) Too Much Information
- We notice things already primed in memory or repeated often
- Bizarre, funny, visually striking things stick out more than non-bizarre, unfunny things
- We notice when something has changed
- We are drawn to details that confirm our own beliefs
- We notice flaws in others more easily than we notice flaws in ourselves
4) Not Enough Meaning
- We tend to find stories and patterns even when looking at sparse data
- We fill in characteristics from stereotypes, generalities and prior histories
- We imagine things and people we’re familiar with or fond of, as better
- We simplify probabilities and numbers to make them easier to think about
- We think we know what other people are thinking
- We project our current mindset and assumptions onto the past and future
