Critical Thinking: 4 Cognitive Biases to Avoid

 People use readily available information to make judgments. If someone were to ask you which job is more dangerous -- police officer or landscaper -- you would probably answer "police officer" because of easy-to-access thoughts of the job, likely aided through television. However, although police officers have dangerous jobs, this is actually the wrong answer.  

This class provides examples of how this bias exists and prompts learners to ask important questions for how to think more deeply. 

 Some situations are zero-sum, where one person's gain is equal to another person's loss. If you take my slice of pizza, that's a slice I no longer have!

However, many situations are intuitively assumed to be zero-sum, when they are not. This may lead people to be competitive when cooperation produces better outcomes.

This class engages students in exercises so that they can answer the question, "Is this zero-sum or not?" and then provides specific strategies for how to avoid this bias. 

 Jeanne Louis Calment was once the oldest person living in the world. She ate lots of chocolate and smoked lots of cigarettes. Does this mean that chocolate and cigarettes are the key to a long life? No!

Assuming otherwise is falling victim to the survivorship bias, where we look at winners/survivors and overlook the people for whom the chocolate-and-cigarettes diet didn't treat so well. 

In this class, we ask, "What aren't we seeing?" and gather information in response to that question. 

 When there's less of something, we value it more. Sometimes that makes sense -- yes, we want a hard-to-get appointment with a great doctor -- and sometimes we buy an underwhelming, overpriced cupcake because there is only one left, and we don't want to miss out! 

The latter example is the scarcity bias at work. We assume that just because something is scarce, it should be valued more. 

In this class, learners distinguish between real and artificial scarcity, and learn to be objective about it.