What my encounter with a hippie taught me about bias and making decisions

Even with the best of intentions, our biases will always be with us and affect our judgements, often causing us to behave irrationally. But are there ways for us to make smarter decisions regardless? The following article digs a little bit deeper into this very question and offers several concrete tools to help us in this process.

At a wedding a while ago, I struck up a conversation with a guy who looked as if he’d just escaped out of a hippie commune from the 1960’s. Somehow, our chat turned to the subject of investing, and before I knew it, my new friend began praising the stock of a well-known tech company he’d recently bought.

Despite understanding his reasoning, I couldn’t help but think to myself “what does this guy know about the market anyway, I’ve been following it for years… Over the next few months, his investment in that company more than quadrupled in value as I watched on the sidelines with nothing to show for it but a bruised ego.

Looking back, I realize now that instead of judging what he was explaining to me on the merits, I let my feelings about his over worn sandals and hair that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in months, influence an investment decision that should of course only have been based on logical arguments.

I of all people should have known better: being physically disabled from birth and in a wheelchair as a result, I have at times been at the receiving end of people’s biases myself and know all too well what it feels like to be judged on the basis of my physical appearance.

And so, as I licked my wounds, I became determined to get to the bottom of this and find out whether there is a way for us to address our biases and become smarter decision-makers as a result.

Wired to be biased?

As I researched the subject, it quickly became clear to me that we are all biased in some way, it’s just that we don’t always realize when we are.

Our brain is wired so as to make it as easy as possible for us to process and interpret information. This process happens naturally, and in most cases even subconsciously. This is probably a good thing, because if we’d be constantly exposed to new information without having some sort of filter, anyone but Sheldon Cooper would probably go straight out crazy. But one of the side effects of this is that it leads to the creation of biases.

Just to be clear, biases are the associations, beliefs or attitudes we hold toward a person or a thing.

Here are some of the different types of biases:

· Confirmation bias: occurs when you favor information that’s in line with your beliefs, and ignore evidence that doesn’t conform to that.

· Availability heuristic: this happens when you consider information that comes to you quickly as more important, leading you to overestimate the probability of similar things happening to you in the future.

· The Dunning – Kruger effect: occurs when people can’t recognize their own incompetence and believe they are smarter than they actually are. I don’t know about you but some ‘stable geniuses’ come to mind here…

· The Halo effect: when your overall impression of someone influences how you think and feel about their character. This applies especially for example, when how a person looks, influences how you view their other qualities, which is exactly the trap I foolishly fell into when I met my hippie friend…

Come to think of it, I’m quite familiar with that particular bias as well. When for instance I meet someone for the first time, the interaction that follows almost always unfolds in a completely natural way. But on rare occasions, a funny thing happens: after meeting me, my new acquaintance suddenly starts speaking in a high tone of voice and at a distinctly slower pace. It’s as if the mere sight of my wheelchair not only makes me unable to walk, but somehow also rendered me deaf and senile…

Once I open my mouth and it becomes clear that I’m able to hold a regular, dare I say at times even thoughtful conversation, an unmistakable look of surprise appears in their eyes, and something magical happens: the shattering of a mental stereotype. And that my friend is one heck of a feeling!

Lately, the biases that exist towards ethnic minorities have been very much in the news. One of the reasons why biases like racial prejudice are so hard to overcome is because once our brain makes certain associations, they become very difficult to eliminate, especially when they’ve been ingrained in us through our upbringing and social conditioning.

This became even clearer to me after reading about a study that showed that police officers, after being shown an image of both a white and a black person’s face, were far more likely to be focused on the black person’s face when asked to think about arresting, capturing or shooting someone. “…the association between African Americans and crime is so powerful that just thinking about violent crime can lead people to focus their attention on black faces” said Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt, who led the study.

Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt, a leading psychologist on the topic of unconscious bias.

Overcoming our biases

Even though it may seem difficult, even overwhelming sometimes, steps can, and should be taken by everyone of us to address our biases. Here are a few of them:

· Focus on seeing people as individuals: rather than using stereotypes to define people, make an effort to consider them at a more personal level.

· Consciously work on changing your stereotypes: if you realize that your reaction to a person might be rooted in biases or stereotypes, make an effort to consciously change that.

· Change your perspective: try to place yourself in the other person’s shoes: how would you feel if you were in the same position? What factors might contribute to a person acting a certain way?

In the end, it’s important to acknowledge that however good our intentions may be, biases will always be with us as they are part of human nature. The good news is that while they are often subconscious, it is possible to address them, by adopting new attitudes, challenging our mental models and stereotypes, and by having the courage to take on a perspective different from our own. But this can only happen if we acknowledge their existence in the first place. Once we’re able to do that, we will not only make sounder judgments about people, but also most importantly, become better human beings in the process.