Looking into some cognitive biases that affect our memory, judgement and decision making.
Reading the title might throw you a bit off, but I’m here to tell you it’s not as judgemental or harsh as you might think.
The reason why I felt I should write this is basically because individually, we all think in a similar way, which affects how we move and interact. We walk around thinking we’re being judged by what we wear, whom we talk to, that sort of thing, but really, every single person in that room with you is focused on themselves, which is funny because, they themselves are in a similar way caught up on other people’s perception of them as well.
We’re ever caught up in our own irrational thinking which is where some of our internal thoughts always get the best of us. A great way to make this a little easier to maneuver is taking a step back and reminisce a time where someone in your vicinity had a slight embarrassing moment. Chances are that you might have not given that moment as much thought. Once you look at it from a different angle, it's easier for one to cope with such a feeling. All this is due to our egocentric bias.
Egocentric Bias
We’re wired to think that the world revolves around us, we are naturally self centered. At times I think if we normalized our self centered attributes more, we would learn more about ourselves (highly unlikely). With that being said I’d like to point out some common cognitive biases that cause us to be this way. Such biases include;
The False Consensus effect/bias: This is a cognitive bias where an individual believes that everyone else around them believes in the same principle. Some of the best examples include, believing that everyone in the same circle as you agrees with all your political views. Or thinking that every married couple wants to have a child. You might end up, startled by the fact that not all your opinions and views are equally shared by your family or friends.
The curse of knowledge effect/bias: Have you ever been in a situation where you might have little to zero knowledge about a certain topic and once you ask for clarification or seem dumbfounded the people you’re with act surprised like you should’ve known it for the longest. That’s basically what this cognitive bias entails. We’ve all been ridiculed for not knowing the “obvious”.
The illusion of Transparency effect/bias: This is a cognitive bias in which the individual overestimates the situation, when it really isn’t as apparent as they make it out to be. It is similar to that of the spotlight effect, the only difference is that it's more of internal while the spotlight effect is of an external bias.
The Spotlight effect/bias: It is considered to be a tendency where one might think people are noticing them more than they do (as explained earlier), almost the same feeling as that of stage fright. A great example would be waking up to find you are late for an early morning meeting, enter the room and everyone is already there. As the meeting continues, a part of your mind is stressed thinking that the people in that room might find you to be a bit irresponsible when in hindsight all they are worried about is when the meeting might adjourn.
Looking at all these biases, some of the best ways you can prevent some of these biases from taking control of you, is to;
- Have an open mind. This means accepting the various info which counters your beliefs.
- Be curious to ask other people’s opinion on whatever it is that’s being talked about (even if you think you might have the most knowledge in it). This can help you be to be aware of blind spots in the way you think and prevent overconfidence, which is the main factor of some biases.
If you got this far, I hope you got something out of it, I appreciate you for passing by. Thank you for attending my TED Talk..lol
