We like to think that we are rational people, that we make most of our decisions by weighing the pros and cons. That belief gives us a sense of security and comfort. However, day after day we fall victim to cognitive biases.
Cognitive biases are deviations from the thought process that lead to distortion, inaccurate judgment, or illogical interpretation of events. In many cases, these biases are due to the need to take a position in response to certain stimuli without having all the necessary information. We can then reach erroneous conclusions.
Obviously, cognitive biases allow us to act quickly, but they do not always lead us to make the best decision. In fact, they often keep us tied to our comfort zone, where we feel safe, and prevent us from developing our full potential.
The good news is that once we learn to recognize cognitive biases, we are no longer at their mercy.
The most limiting cognitive biases
1. Confirmation bias. This is the tendency to favor data that confirms our beliefs and to discard those that contradict them, a phenomenon that is more noticeable when it comes to emotional content or when beliefs are deeply rooted. This bias also leads us to interpret ambiguous evidence in favor of our position. For example, a person who is against abortion will have the tendency to look for evidence that confirms their ideas.
As victims of this bias, we close ourselves off to new ideas or positions that are different from our own, thereby entrenching ourselves in our position and refusing to go a step further, even if it is to achieve an understanding with the other person or to broaden our horizons.
2. Anchoring bias. This is a tendency to “anchor” oneself on one feature or piece of information and ignore the rest. We are victims of this bias when, for example, we go shopping and only consider the price of the product or when we get angry with our partner for an isolated event and we focus exclusively on the defect, making their qualities disappear.
The anchoring effect leads us to adopt a very biased view of reality, it is as if we were walking through life wearing blinders that only allow us to see a few details. In this way, we never manage to analyze situations as a whole, we do not have a global vision of events and, in the long run, this leads us to make bad decisions.
3. Loss aversion. Once we own something or have established a relationship with someone, we prefer to avoid loss rather than gain. For example, in economic terms, a person would ask for more money to give up one of their possessions than they would be willing to pay for that same item before they owned it. This is due to the fact that we extend our “self” to our possessions and relationships so, in our eyes, their value increases.
This is a widespread cognitive bias that in the popular imagination has been translated with the phrase: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” Obviously, this prejudice can make us very unhappy because it keeps us tied to the past, to the things and people we know, and it closes us off to new possibilities.
4. Hindsight bias. This is the tendency to look back and remember our own decisions as better than they actually were. This is a recapitulation that we do to feel good about ourselves, for which we modify the memory of ideas that were previously in our minds that were contrary to the decision we made. Since we cannot go back and change the decision, we put this mechanism into practice through which we convince ourselves that we have opted for the best alternative.
However, self-deception is never the best solution because it prevents us from learning from our mistakes and traps us in a vicious circle. Taking an objective stance regarding our decisions allows us to grow and develop our potential to the fullest, perhaps changing the path we have taken or choosing a different route next time.
5. Exposure gap effect. This is the tendency to express preferences for certain facts or things, simply because they are familiar to us. Without a doubt, the imprint we have from our childhood is very strong and manifests itself throughout life because it gives us a feeling of security. Obviously, this cognitive bias does not only apply to childhood experiences. For example, a person may vote for a political party just because it is the most advertised and is familiar to them, or they may take a certain position only because certain arguments “sound familiar” to them.
However, choosing certain experiences or opting for certain types of relationships just because they are familiar to us prevents us from leaving our comfort zone. When we are unable to value other alternatives and we stick with what we know, we will not be exploiting our potential to the fullest and, at the end of the road, we are likely to ask ourselves: what would have happened if…?
P.S.: And if you think you’ve never been a victim of these cognitive biases, you’re probably suffering from what’s known as “blind spot bias,” which involves not noticing your own biases and seeing yourself as less biased than others.
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