Understanding Biases
Why Do We Think, Believe and Act This Way
Do you ever wonder why someone believes or acts the way they do? Have you thought, “How can they believe….?” “How can they be so hateful or so evil?” “Why would anyone ever want to….?” Our human brains are constantly making judgments about people around us and placing them in categories we understand. We are all different and unique, and yet we have a lot in common. Sometimes it’s difficult to see our similarities or to understand all of our differences. Sometimes we make false assumptions about others because we don’t really know them or they don’t fit any of the categories known by us.
(Source Flaticon)
During 2023 I listened to a wonderful podcast called Learning How To See with Brian McLaren. In the first season, Brian and his friends, Father Richard Rohr and Jacqui Lewis delve into the topic of biases that effect what we see and believe. We are all individually shaped by what we learn and experience throughout our lives. And what we have learned to believe about the world around us shapes our perceptions and opinions in so many ways. Father Richard shared a Latin phrase: Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis [recipitur] which means, whatever is received is received according to the manner of the receiver.
Explicit biases are when we are consciously aware of and make intentional decisions based on our biases. Implicit biases or unconscious biases are those we are not aware of. Often it takes work to bring biases into our awareness, eliminate bias from our thinking, and choose different behavior. Let’s spend some time looking at some different types of bias and thinking about how we see these play out in ourselves and the world around us.
(Image borrowed from the Visual Capitalist)
Brian McLaren developed the following list of thirteen types of biases which all start with the letter C:
Confirmation bias: The human brain welcomes information that confirms what it already thinks and resists information that disturbs or contradicts what it already thinks.
Complexity bias: The human brain prefers a simple lie to a complex truth.
Community bias(AKA social confirmation bias): The human brain finds it very hard for you to see something your group doesn’t want you to see. In other words, we put tribe over truth.
Complementarity bias: If people are nice to you, you’ll be open to what they see and have to say. If they aren’t nice to you, you won’t. We mirror back the attitude we receive from other people, and that makes us open or closed to what they have to say, whether it’s true or not.
Contact bias: If you lack contact with someone, you won’t see what they see.
Conservative/liberal bias: Our brains like to see as our party sees, and we flock with those who see as we do.
Consciousness bias: Our brains see from a location, a person’s level of consciousness, or we could say their cognitive maturity makes seeing some things possible and seeing other things impossible.
Competency bias. Our brains prefer to think of ourselves as above average. As a result, we are incompetent at knowing how incompetent or competent we really are.
Confidence bias. Our brains prefer a confident lie to a hesitant truth. We mistake confidence for competence, and we are all vulnerable to the lies of confident people.
Conspiracy bias. When we feel shame, we are especially vulnerable to stories that cast us as victims of an evil conspiracy by some enemy or another. In other words, our brains like stories in which we’re either the hero or the victim but never the villain.
Comfort, or complacency, or convenience bias: Our brains welcome data that allows us to relax and be happy, and our brains reject data that requires us to adjust, work, or inconvenience ourselves.
Catastrophe, or normalcy, or baseline bias. Our brains are wired to set a baseline of normalcy and assume that what feels normal has always been and will always remain. That means that we minimize threats, and we’re vulnerable to disasters, especially disasters that develop slowly.
Cash bias. Our brains are wired to see within the framework of our economy, and we see what helps us make money. It is very hard to see anything that interferes with our way of making a living. (adapted from Brian McLaren’s e-book, Why Don’t They Get It?)
I think these biases explain so much about the extreme division and multiple versions of “truth” in our world. If we could better understand our own biases and the biases of those we disagree with, I believe that we would realize that we aren’t really as different from each other as we may think. We might diminish the hatred and the tendency to judge others so harshly. We might become more authentic and happy versions of ourselves, rather than feeling divided within ourselves about who we really are versus who we think we have to be or portray to others. I believe this is one great path to learning to love ourselves and others more fully.
I think it is healthy to ask ourselves: “Is there anything that I believe that is inhibiting my ability to fully love and respect others?” “Do my opinions, beliefs or actions harm others?” “Where did this belief come from and how do I know that it is true or right?”
If you would like to dig deeper into this topic, you may want to listen to Learning How to See With Brian McLaren or read his show notes.
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The list of biases is huge. I can see within myself, over different moments in my life, where I have experienced personally my ownership of those biases.