Cognitive biases

A cognitive bias is a systematic misinterpretation of available information that influences how thoughts are processed, judged and made decisions. The concept of cognitive bias was introduced by Israeli psychologists Kahneman and Tversky in 1972. 

Types of biases

  • Confirmation bias: It is the tendency to seek, encourage, interpret or recall information in a way that confirms something that you have already decided before, or that fosters very deep-rooted beliefs and assumptions.
  • Anchorage bias: In this case, you focus almost exclusively on the first information you receive to make a decision.
  • Selective observation bias: This kind of cognitive bias is given when you direct your attention to something based on your expectations, and you ignore the rest of the information.
  • Negative bias: You pay more attention, and you place far more importance on negative experiences and information, rather than positive or neutral.
  • Reactive resistance: It is the desire to do the opposite of what someone asks or advises you, because of perceived threat or freedom of choice itself.
  • Heuristic availability: It's a mental shortcut that gives more value and credibility to the first information that comes to your mind and that's easier to remember.
  • Impact bias: It is the tendency to overestimate the intensity and duration of a reaction to future events or events of a good or bad nature.



If you take a walk around the Codex for a while, we can find bias grouped in four directions. There is a collection of bias linked to perception and the need to reduce information complexity. The most well-known is confirmation, which makes us believe what strengthens our convictions and to doubt what contradicts them. We have heard a lot about it, especially as a result of the info-demics linked to the circulation of disinformation. Memory and forgetfulness are part of the human condition, and just as we have seen that perception is selective, so is choosing what we retain in our memory. Selective perception keeps you from seeing people with hair on the street, when you break your arm, or with the jacket you're so eager to buy. The second block has to do with making sense, finding patterns or creating stories about what we don't know. These include from the bias of authority to the paridolia (for example, when we identify shapes in the clouds we are giving meaning to a vague visual stimulus).  In practice, cross-cutting is essential to understanding how we digest the information of the world around us. Being in a situation of economic, personal, educational or psychological vulnerability increases the susceptibility to misinformation and the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories.

Realizing the cognitive biases that govern our day-to-day does not help us escape them, but it does allow us to decide whether to act as an automatic pilot or give more room for reflection. In a way, it is related to the discussion of implicit values in algorithms (which are eventually programmed by people with corresponding cognitive myopia). The difference is that in programming the
re is room (or it could be regulated in such a way that there is) to decide consciously and consensus on what partialities we incorporate. And in fact, the bias is comfortable for us, so much so that in company robot studies we end up preferring those who are biased. It makes them more acceptable to humans because we perceive interaction as more intuitive, more pleasant and closer. Maybe that's why we're bent and delighted to be, because if ignorance gives us happiness, glasses as we go along make life supposedly more comfortable.

 



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