Overcoming Bias

How to circumvent biases that hinder fair treatment.

The very word bias has a very negative connotation to it — nobody wants to be accused of having biases. But it turns out biases are very helpful most of the time. They only become a hindrance — and possibly evil — when we fare just on bias alone.

In 2002, cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for the work on decision-making he and his colleague Amos Tversky (1937–1996) did. Tversky and Kahneman developed their prospect theory which established a cognitive basis for common errors that arise from heuristics and biases.

Heuristics and Biases

Heuristics are rules of thumb — simple strategies that can be used to quickly find solutions to complex problems — for instance, by focusing on the most relevant aspects of a problem. Heuristic processes are used to find solutions most likely to be correct — which does not mean, however, that heuristics are always right. What Kahneman and Tversky found was that cognitive biases influence especially the faster thinking, the system one thinking. “Jumping to conclusions,” is a very apt phrase in this respect.

Inductive reasoning is particularly vulnerable to biases of all sorts. We can use the experiences we’ve had and the…