What Are Cognitive Biases and How to Deal With Them

As human beings, we often fall prey various types of cognitive biases. As the word “bias” tends to have a negative connotation, many people often think that biases are a bad thing. You may be surprised, however, that these biases have actually evolved to serve many adaptive functions. 

Biases are essentially mental shortcuts. As we are constantly bombarded with information, these shortcuts allow us to make quick decisions and judgements to help us prevent information and cognitive overload.  

Here’s a list of common cognitive biases and how you can avoid or overcome them:

Confirmation Bias 

We have the tendency to look out for and favor information that confirms our beliefs and values, all while ignoring or dismissing information that tells us otherwise. This is known as confirmation bias. It is in the human nature to want to be right. As such, we are prone to selecting information that aligns with our beliefs, making us believe what we want to believe. 

We have this bias to reduce cognitive dissonance — the discomfort we feel when faced with conflicting beliefs. To reduce this discomfort, our brain fine tunes the information that we take in, such that we only take in bits of information confirming that we are right. This bias also protects our self-esteem as it makes our beliefs seem more accurate. Thinking that we are right boosts our self-confidence and make us have a more positive self-image.  

However, it is important to be open-minded, to let your opinions be challenged, and to consider alternative perspectives. One way to avoid falling prey to the confirmation bias is to surround yourself with diverse groups of people and to be exposed to differing views.  

Hindsight Bias 

“I knew it all along!” “I told you this would happen!”

If you find yourself saying things like these, you are probably engaging in hindsight bias. As the saying goes, “hindsight is always 20/20”. Hindsight bias refers to the tendency to perceive events as more predictable than they really are and this usually happens after the events have already occurred.  

Similar to the confirmation bias, the hindsight bias helps to boost our self-confidence as it feels good to know that we accurately predicted something.  

Here are some things to keep in mind to avoid the hindsight bias. First, we should not only limit ourselves to one outcome but consider alternative outcomes as well. Next, reasoning why an event occurred can also help us realize that the event was not as predictable as we thought it was. For instance, we think that Team A will be the winner of a soccer competition. However, in reality, Team B had better players but their ace players decided to withdraw from the game at the very last minute that day. Team A eventually won and we think that we knew it right from the start. After reasoning that Team A may have won because of unforeseen events, we can see that the event of Team A winning is not that predictable after all. 

Negativity Bias

Negativity bias refers to the tendency to focus on negative events and stimuli more than positive ones. These negative events also stick to our memories for a longer period of time and influence the decisions we make. 

In the past, our ancestors had to hunt for food and compete to survive. Therefore, negativity bias was adaptive as it helped them remain alert to anything that could have potentially threatened their survival and well-being. However, today, this hard-wired tendency to focus on negative events is no longer as helpful to us. In fact, paying too much attention to negative events may trigger negative emotions and increased rumination.  

One way to avoid the negativity bias is to reinterpret negative events in a more positive light. For instance, we can shift our focus to the takeaways we can learn from a particular negative event. This way, we are reframing a negative event into a positive one.  

Self-Serving Bias 

Self-serving bias is the tendency to take credit for the positive outcomes we have experienced, but blame external factors for the negative outcomes. When we take credit for the positive outcomes and events that happen to us, this helps to boost our confidence. On the other hand, blaming external factors when we experience negative events helps to protect our self-esteem. However, the self-serving bias can backfire if we constantly point fingers at others or blame our own poor performance on situational factors - doing so hinders us from learning and growing as a person.

To avoid committing self-serving bias, it is important to learn from our mistakes and reflect on how we can improve. We should also not forget to credit others for our own success as well.  

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) 

FAE is the tendency to attribute others’ actions to internal factors and dispositional traits (e.g. their personality), while attributing our own behaviors to external situational factors that are beyond our control. For instance, when the whole class performed badly for an examination, we blame our own poor performance on a bad night’s sleep (an external factor) but think others did not perform well because they did not study hard enough (an internal factor). 

FAE can be adaptive as it protects our self-esteem by attributing negative events we have experienced to uncontrollable external factors but does the opposite for others. This makes us feel better than others and also does not make us feel disheartened when we experience negative events. However, excessive FAE can lead to the creation or perpetuation of stereotypes and prejudice.

To avoid FAE, we have to make a deliberate effort to put ourselves in the shoes of others and try to obtain a balanced view of others.  

Spotlight Effect 

The spotlight effect is the tendency to overestimate how much others observe and judge us. As the term suggests, it is the tendency to feel that the spotlight is on us all the time as though we are actors on a stage, especially focusing on our flaws, weakness and mistakes. The spotlight effect is highly correlated to feelings of nervousness and embarrassment. In some cases, it even leads to social anxiety and withdrawal.  

One way to avoid the spotlight effect is to recognize that everyone is preoccupied with their own matters (e.g. talking to their friends, focusing on their worries). Therefore, contrary to our beliefs, other people are unlikely to have the time to notice us and the things we do. Even if they did, they are unlikely to remember our mistakes for long.  

Being aware of the biases helps!

Interestingly, studies have also found that when people are aware of such biases, they are less susceptible to them. Why is this so? Simply put, when we are more aware about the existence of such biases, we end up making an intentional effort to avoid falling into their trap. Therefore, by simply knowing that these biases exist and exactly what these biases are, we are less likely to fall prey to them.