Left to its own devices, human reason is apt to engage in fallacies and systematic errors that lead us to decisions that are detrimental to our best interests. If we want to make better decisions in our professional and personal lives, we must be aware of these blind spots that are hiding in plain sight by first identifying them and then taking appropriate action to eliminate these biases from our decision-making.
We recently lost one of the leading experts in the field of learning and thinking, Dr. Daniel Kahneman. How exceptional was he? Dr. Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics even though he never took an economics course. He was a pioneer in the field of behavioral economics, which demonstrates the social-psychological basis of economics. Through landmark publications such as “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” he used anecdotes as a teaching method to prove his points to a very skeptical audience who did not believe humans were hardwired by blind spots that warped their judgements with often counterintuitive results. A prior article in Training magazine (https://trainingmag.com/unconscious-bias/) focused on how these blind spots—also referred to as unconscious bias—impact training and development
Less Control Than We Thought
Kahneman described that the mind operates in two modes: fast and intuitive (mental activities that we’re more or less born with or know “intuitively,” called System One) and slow and analytical (a more complex mode involving experience and requiring effort reflection and self-examination, called System Two).
Kahneman exemplified the skill of teaching and learning through vignettes. Here are some notable examples that expose the seductive mental shortcuts that can warp our thoughts and decisions:
- Doctors are more likely to order cancer screenings for patients they see early in the morning than late in the afternoon.
- A study of 1.5 million cases found that when judges are passing down sentences on days following a loss by the local city’s football team, they tend to be tougher than on days following a win.
- In a study of loss aversion it was found that the loss of $100 hurt twice as much as the pleasure gained by making $100. This led to the observation that it is foolish to check one’s stock portfolio frequently, since the predominance of pain experienced in the stock market will most likely lead to excessive and possibly self-defeating caution.
- When an insurance company asked its underwriters, who determine premium rates based on risk assessments, to come up with estimates for the same group of sample cases, their suggested premiums varied by a median of 55 percent. So one adjuster would set a premium at $9,500, while a colleague looking at the same exact case set it at $16,700.
- In a study of the effectiveness of putting calorie counts on menu items, customers were more likely to make lower-calorie choices if the labels were placed to the left of the food item rather than the right. Kahneman explained, “When people see the food item first, they apparently think, ‘Delicious!’ or ‘Not so great!’ before they see the calorie label. Here again, their initial reaction greatly affects their choices.” This hypothesis is supported, the author wrote, in a creative test by the “finding that for Hebrew speakers, who read right to left, the calorie label has a significantly larger impact if it is on the right rather than the left.”
As Kahneman noted, “Our biases frequently cause us to want the wrong things. Our perceptions and memories are slippery, especially about our own mental states. Our free will is bounded. We have much less control over ourselves than we thought.”
Examine Hidden Biases
The brain’s reliance on neural shortcuts contributes to unconscious bias. These mental shortcuts enable quick decision-making but may lead to oversimplified and biased assessments of others.
Those of us in the Training and Talent Development field need to examine how our hidden biases influence what and how we teach and what assumptions influence the decisions we make about our students.
Please send any examples, questions, or best practices in response to this article to me at: Neal@NealGoodmanGroup.com