what steps might you take to protect yourself from"confirmation bias

Editor's annotation: This article is a re-run equally function of our countdown of meridian stories from the past year.

We're in the midst of a public health emergency, a slow-moving economic disaster and a menstruum of major social upheaval. These are platonic conditions for cognitive bias to take root. When nosotros are stressed, our attending is distracted, emotions run high, the dangers of cerebral bias are elevated, and strategic thinking and decision making are often dumb.

It'due south important for leaders to recognize their biases and accept steps to minimize or eliminate them, individually and across their teams. It's also of import in internal and external communications to recognize that cerebral bias may also be interfering with your ability to communicate with your target audiences.

Hither are five ways to mitigate and avoid cognitive bias in times of crunch:

1. Research and test your messages.

At the centre of every good communications strategy and crisis plan is a messaging platform. Fundamental messages are used to assistance drive the beliefs, motivations and behaviors of an system's target audiences and stakeholders.

Messaging can target employees, customers, regulators and communities. In all of these cases, messaging needs to exist based on inquiry that gives emotional insights into the target audience. This avoids your own bias clouding your communications and helps you place your target audience'south cognitive bias, to which you might be able to arrange your messaging.

The framing bias could be used to ready context in your messaging. For example, emphasizing a huge potential number upfront for buying a product or describing an infection rate makes the afterward shared bodily price or infection rate seem smaller. The reverse is of course truthful as well.

Framing is all about how the information is presented to an audience and less about the actual facts. Statistical information is often framed. For example, rather than saying 80% of dentists choose your production, say 4 out of five recommend it. Instead of proverb your organization reduced GHGs by 50 metric tons, put information technology in terms people empathise, similar saying you reduced emissions equal to xi passenger vehicles.

An additional pace is to evaluate the success of your messaging platform through a focus grouping or other exercise to validate that they're being received as intended. However, in deploying the framing technique, be careful it does not overly misconstrue the intended message and chance backfiring—a perception of "spin" can erode trust and damage the relationship with your audience.

2. Admit that cognitive bias exists.

Another important pace to minimize your cerebral bias is to admit that it exists.

For example, normalcy bias has compelled many leaders to minimize the threat of the coronavirus with statements similar "information technology's concern as usual" or "it'southward of import to get students back to the classroom this fall." Normalcy bias minimizes threat warnings and downplays disaster and its impacts. In a public health emergency, exhibiting normalcy bias in messaging erodes a leader's or brand'south credibility and potentially endangers employees, customers or students by undermining safety precautions or prudent planning.

Along the same lines, familiarity bias drives people to categorize new experiences or situations forth the lines of the familiar rather than evaluating them more deeply. This is what led some leaders to compare COVID-nineteen to influenza saying, "it's no worse or dissimilar than the seasonal flu."

Both of these biases indicate a sure level of denial, which is a common commencement reaction to terrible news.  Fugitive or minimizing biases is critically important during periods of crunch when nosotros are mentally taxed, juggling multiple issues and just plain tired. This is when biases are most probable to color decisions.

3. Equip yourself with tools.

Tools like a crunch program, evaluation criteria, scoring matrices and fifty-fifty the tried and true checklist can enforce the discipline needed to ensure objective and reasoned decisions and avoid cognitive traps, particularly in a crunch.

Airline pilots and surgeons rely on checklists to ensure bias is kept out of their decision making. In the case of pilots, a heuristic of "aviate, navigate, communicate" is taught early. When an issue occurs in the sky, the pilot knows to focus starting time on flying the aeroplane, on navigating to safety next and on communications with the belfry or other pilots third. (See "A.N.C.—It Matters Now More than Than Ever.")

Having a Disaster Recovery and a Business Continuity Program is another essential, particularly at present. Normalcy bias oftentimes delays the development or timely updating of such plans.

4. Surround yourself with multiple viewpoints.

A variety of insights and data sources helps to reduce bias.

When y'all are surrounded past people with different life experiences, professional expertise and beliefs or world views, your conclusion making will be based on more inputs and become more than allowed to confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is our tendency to crimson pick data or viewpoints that lucifer our own expectations or experiences.

Boardroom diversity is an indicator of college corporate performance.

A written report by McKinsey studied board limerick, returns on equity (ROE), and margins on earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 180 publicly traded companies in four countries over two years. McKinsey plant "startlingly consistent" results: "For companies ranking in the elevation quartile of executive-lath diversity, ROEs were 53 percent higher, on average, than they were for those in the bottom quartile. At the same time, EBIT margins at the about various companies were fourteen percent higher, on average, than those of the least diverse companies."

Sometimes a leader must make a judgment call without the benefit of other viewpoints. In those moments, it's important not to exhibit overconfidence bias. Overconfidence bias leads to a false sense of skill, talent or cocky-conventionalities. For leaders, information technology can exist a side-effect to their power and influence. Overconfidence bias shows up in illusions of command, timing optimism, and the desirability result (i.e. thinking if you desire something, you can make information technology happen).

5. Acquire to spot common cognitive biases.

So far, we've discussed normalcy bias, familiarity bias, confirmation bias and overconfidence bias. Some other frequent cognitive biases include:

Anchoring bias. Anchoring refers to using previous information as a reference betoken for all subsequent information, which can skew a conclusion-making process. Putting the original total toll next to the markdown anchors our original perception of value equally existence the full price. Against that beginning piece of data, the sale price looks similar a steal. Simply what if the wholesale cost of the item was start shown? The auction priced wouldn't await then highly-seasoned.

Self-serving bias. Self-serving cognitive bias helps soften the blow to the ego when we make a poor determination by attributing it to poor luck. When things plow out well, though, we aspect it to skill or something else that was directly under our control. The downside to this bias in organizations, teams and leaders is that it does not produce a culture of accountability.

Herd m entality . Equally social creatures, it is hard to fight herd mentality. When there is consensus or a growing trend or fad, our gut is to move in the same direction as the herd. While this may experience like the path of to the lowest degree resistance or safer, it is a decision behavior based on emotion and not logic.

Loss aversion . This is 1 of my favorite principles: Avoiding a loss is a greater motivator than gaining a reward. This tin can atomic number 82 to missed opportunities driven by risk disfavor. Yous come across it on game shows when contestants settle for the cash they've earned rather risking information technology for a much college reward. Or in organizational cultures where the mentality of "keeping one'south head downward" and analyzing things to expiry before an eventual decision past a committee is the safer route than the perceived riskier route of decisiveness and efficiency.

Reactance bias. While you might think that members of the public who defy face-roofing recommendations or requirements are exhibiting overconfidence bias, they are more likely showing reactance bias, which leads to a fearfulness that complying with one asking will end in the restriction of futurity choices or freedoms.

Dunning-Kruger issue. This effect describes poor performers who profoundly overestimate their abilities. Put some other way, it applies to people who lack the competence to evaluate their own abilities. To overcome the Dunning-Kruger issue, your reports need to recognize their ain shortcomings. If you tin can grow their competence, they will be able to make more than realistic self-evaluations.

Narrative fallacy. Like the framing bias, the narrative fallacy bias appeals to our love of a good story. When the story is besides good to resist, nosotros get drawn in. Or, when faced with a series of unconnected events, we forcefulness them into a cause and effect narrative. It'southward something nosotros've been doing since earlier the ancient Greeks explained the sunrise and dusk equally the god Helios pulling the sun across the sky in his golden chariot. Fight the urge to impose narratives where no existent connection exists and look instead at what the data says.

Hindsight bias. Statements like "I knew it all along" bespeak hindsight bias. It's like shooting fish in a barrel to experience and claim this after the fact, but the danger is that hindsight bias distorts our memories. We were unlikely to take been equally confident of the prediction before the event equally nosotros appear to be afterwards it. This can pb to overconfidence and a belief that a person can predict the outcomes of future events.

Be mindful. To avoid cerebral bias at decision junctures and particularly in times of crisis, be sure you're continuing to research and test your communications. Acknowledging that cognitive bias affects the states all, using your available tools, engaging diverse viewpoints and data sources, and familiarizing yourself with the unlike ways our minds effort to shortcut our decisions tin can aid ensure a audio strategy and outcome.

Julie Wright is president and founder of (Westward)correct On Communications and a partner in (10), a hybrid corporate strategy and communications consultancy. Follow her on Twitter @juliewright . A version of this story originally appeared on the author'due south blog, Insights past (X) .

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Source: https://www.prdaily.com/5-tips-for-identifying-and-avoiding-cognitive-bias-during-a-crisis/

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