Thinking Traps

The Many Faces of Cognitive Bias

B. N. Dent

The legendary author Stephen King once said: “The brain is a muscle that can move the world.” The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, remarked: “The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.” And an endless number of other individuals throughout the course of human existence have recognised the unparalleled capabilities of the mind. To see the timeless resonance of the idea that our mind is our most valuable asset, you can simply look at the development of human civilisation. It is through great minds and the challenging of pre-existing ideas that we have continually innovated and, for the most part, created a new world each year that is more advanced than the last.  

From the invention of the wheel to agriculture, paper, the telescope, electricity and now advanced AI, our minds continue to tick, and we continue to progress. Irrespective of all of the marvels that the mind has enabled individuals to achieve over time, mine still cannot wrap its way around achieving full marks in business studies multis – a task that somehow feels perpetually impossible. But that’s not the focal issue that I want to examine in this article. Instead, I want to inspect the many traps that our minds have a tendency to lead us into – cognitive biases.

Simply put, cognitive bias refers to a systematic error in thinking, occurring when people process and interpret information in a way that deviates from rationality or logical thinking, often leading to distorted perceptions. For me, what makes cognitive biases so fascinating is their paradoxical nature. As previously touched on, the human mind is an incredible problem solver, and one critical element of any good problem solver is speed. In the context of the mind, this speed involves the ability to hastily identify the key issues of a problem and then consider the fastest way to reach a solution. Consequently, when dealing with tasks, the brain often employs heuristics, or mental shortcuts, to simplify problems, which in turn allow for more efficient decision-making. However, it is here where the race car of our mind often speeds past rationality and causes us to crash into the embankment that is illogical decision-making. 

This is where the paradoxical nature of cognitive bias becomes evident: our mind naturally tends to seek out patterns and mental shortcuts are employed for swift decision-making, yet paradoxically, these very tactics often lead to incorrect conclusions. To give you a more in-depth view of this phenomenon, let’s take a look at three of the most prevalent forms of cognitive bias to hopefully give you a better idea of how you can avoid these thinking traps. 

Confirmation Bias

Starting off with the heaviest hitter of them all, and one most of you would’ve heard of, confirmation bias involves the tendency to search for, interpret and better remember information that aligns with one’s pre-existing beliefs. I like to think of this one as the “just tell me I’m right” bias. A proposal as to why this bias is so common is that individuals subconsciously view the opportunity cost of coming to terms with the fact that they are wrong and finding the most logical answer more hefty than simply sticking with their preconceived beliefs.

Anchoring Bias

The second most common cognitive bias is anchoring bias, which is the psychological conflated reliance on the initial piece of information encountered (“the anchor”), which subsequently impacts decision-making, even if the anchor is incorrect or irrelevant. When I consider this bias, it strikes me as stubbornness in its finest form. Imagine a new idea in the mind as a seed. Once that first seed has been planted, the mind begins to expand on it, drawing conclusions and implanting roots. From here, with deep roots in the mind, removing that one small seed becomes very difficult. 

Availability Heuristic

The final cognitive bias that I will cover is the availability heuristic, which describes our inclination to draw on information or memories of the past that come to mind the fastest when making decisions about the present or future. An example of this is how people far overestimate the likelihood of plane crashes due to how vividly they are portrayed in the news, and as a result, their innate ability to plant themselves in our minds and quickly jump into our consciousness when we get to thinking. I certainly find resonance in this one. Whenever I get in a car, I feel I may end up on an Insta real that Shore boys will watch in only a matter of days.