Surfacing Hidden Bias

Yesterday I was rambling about decision making.  Well… today I am going to talk a bit more about surfacing hidden bias.

The devils advocate

In religious literature the devil is a being who opposes God and argues against the ’saints’ of God in order that he may bring them down.  Being a Christian I don’t particulary like the devil there is however something we can learn from him.  How to surface hidden bias!   If you notice that you keep making the same mistakes you are probably operating under a bias of some sort.  Let’s take the example of the Gambler’s Fallacy.

“If I pull the lever this time I am more likely to win because I have pulled the lever more times”.  BIAS!

So the devil would say (if he was against gambling)…

“How do you know if you pull the lever this time … it will work”.

A seed of doubt gets sown into the mind of the participant and voila!  You have them doubting what they think they know!  If there is a bias here it will become obvious.  The relative strength of any idea, is only as good as the flaws that are in it.  Here is another example of the devil’s advocate.

“I have to buy those shoes.”  But… the devil might say:

“What would happen if you didn’t buy those shoes.”

The opposite point of view is used as a frame of reference to tease out the flaws in the thinking of the person with said bias. Okay one more:

“If I buy this item off ebay it will save me money later.”   The devil would say:

“How do you know that you will save money later… you might not even want to have it later.”

This technique makes use of the opposite point of view and forces people to confront their bias.  This does not guarantee that they will necessarily follow your advice but it’s a meaningful way to surface hidden assumptions!  Here is another technique I have seen people like Gordon Ramsey use.

Direct Confrontation

Say for a moment somebody you know is in dire need of a change of scenery.  They may be stuck in a rut and their thinking may not be helping them at all.  So what can you do?  Well, you can confront them!  There is an art to this as the following story indicates.

A while ago somebody very close to me was in an abusive relationship.  In the beginning I made myself available to talk to this person just about their relationship and the problems they had.  Overtime I noticed that I was not helping the problem… so I took a different approach.  I would confront them and deliberately raise the issue making a point out the bias in a non-accusing manner.

A word of warning: When you do this be prepared for fireworks.  People don’t like being told they are wrong or their ideas don’t work.  Yet, for the sake of helping them you sometimes have to hurt them.  Just today I did this to a person I have a great deal of respect for.  They basically got angry and said something to me which was uncalled for.  This is where things like learning to see through the biases of others is important.  They are not really angry at you (though they are temporarily!) they are angry because you have exposed them.  When you do this it takes extreme care.  Sometimes the best way is Gordon’s way though I wouldn’t recommend reaching for that one first!  The point is: we don’t know we have a bias until it surfaces and even then we are not sure how to get rid of it.   I have had this happen to me and it hurts!  Be careful.

Using positive ‘confession’ or self-talk

One of the better ways to rid yourself of a bias is to replace it with positive self-talk. Management research suggests that one of the ways we find answers is by talking to ourselves.  I have found that we solve our problems this way too.  That is, we can talk ourselves into and out of things on a regular basis.  Once we are aware of the bias, we can routinely begin to speak through the issue by replacing it with a positive belief.  Example:

“If I had of only looked when I crossed the street I would not have been hit by that car.”

This can easily become:

“I did what I did and at the time I thought it was the best course of action.  I cannot change it so therefore I accept it.”

What’s the difference?  Well the hindsight bias stops us from making better decisions in the future.  By accepting failure and alas being human, we can move forward.  We can make better decisions. Here’s a management example:

“Bob keeps calling in sick.  I have given him two warnings and this will be his third.  However, if I fire him now I won’t know whether or not he will turn out good as an employee.”

In this bias you are deferring action to a future date because you are fearful of confronting Bob.  Firing Bob is the future event you are avoiding so you make up a story to convince yourself that doing it later is the better option.  What to do?   Direct confrontation?  Hold up.  The problem isn’t Bob … it’s you.  It’s what you think the problem is.  If you have around here long enough you will learn my golden rule:

The problem is exactly what you think the problem is.

You think that Bob won’t be happy, you think there will be an issue of having to fire him and you think the outcome will be bad.  One thought produces another which in turn, produces another and that produces another and so on.  Until you have a mess that is purely made up of a system of related biases in your mind.   You need to first look at the situation and begin to restructure your thoughts.

“Bob keeps calling in sick.  I wonder what the problem is with Bob that he would do that?”

Now you have detached the future event from the payoff so you can leave it open as to what needs to be done.  Secondly, getting more information instead of building a scenario where Bob gets fired might actually create a win-win situation for you and Bob.  Bob may just be in the wrong job or he may have genuine problems.  Either way don’t predict events before they happen… you aren’t Nostradamus!

I find in situations like this that my imagination is helpful.  I can imagine a better outcome than Bob getting fired and it clears my mind to help me focus better.  I can use the devil’s advocate to challenge myself and more often than not it settles my emotions.  In closing I would like to relate a story of something that happened to me a few years ago.

After being offered a scholarship to finish my doctorate I had two catastrophic events happen to me.  1. I got struck down with pneumonia and asthma and 2. my primary supervisor pulled out of my PhD.  It meant that I wouldn’t finish my PhD on time and I might be out of a job.   During the coming months my boss continually reminded me to finish my PhD on time and hounded me.  I heard about how I was going to be found ‘unsatisfactory’ in my performance.  In my mind I began to build all kinds of horrible pictures, mental imagery of the worst sort!  My performance review came and went and to my suprise I was found ’satisfactory’.  I had spent so much time preparing for the worse that when the best happened… I was totally surprised!  I learned something extremely valuable from this experience (other than prayer works I might add!): don’t create a worst case scenario without considering the best case scenario.  Have both on hand because you have no idea what’s going to happen.  Be prepared and whatever you do don’t settle on one over the other.  Think it through and make good judgements!

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