Rules of Reason. Bo Bennett PhD

The solution is to be passionate about discovering truth. Be passionate about learning, logic, and reason, no matter where it leads.

      In a generic sense and in the context of reasoning, a bias is a tendency to favor select information in an unreasonable manner, usually due to emotion interfering with reason. The reason why you personally may have these powerful emotional biases are best left for a therapist; you just need to be able to notice them, which is generally not difficult because they accompany strong emotion rather than indifference. For example, if you ever felt an immediate sense of frustration when calling technical support and being connected to a woman, this is a bias. This isn’t about sexism; it is about having a preconceived notion that men are better at technical issues than women. Okay, maybe it is about sexism.

      A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that affects the decisions and judgments that people make. These are much more difficult to detect than our standard biases for several reasons. First, most of these errors are not the result of strong emotion, so there is no visceral indicator of the bias. Second, there are literally hundreds of known biases, which makes memorizing them challenging, to say the least. And third, there is actually a cognitive bias that prevents us from readily admitting our cognitive biases know as the bias blind spot. Despite these challenges, we can recognize our own biases with a cursory knowledge of the biases and some practice. Did I mention that I have an online course on cognitive biases at www.virversity.com/course/cognitivebiases?

      Here are just a handful of what I have found to be the most common cognitive biases people experience related to evaluating claims along with suggestions on how you can overcome these biases.

      1 Confirmation Bias. People choose news sources that are most likely to report information that is consistent with what they already believe. Likewise, they dismiss or even subconsciously forget information that contradicts their beliefs. A near-perfect example of this is how President Trump refers to news that is hostile to him as “Fake News.” This label of “fake” is independent of the truth value of the claims made by the source, but rather a result of agreeing with President Trump. To combat the confirmation bias, focus on facts and reality, not on being right. Embrace being wrong; don’t deny it.

      1 Courtesy Bias. This is the tendency to agree with a claim because it is the polite thing to do, not because you actually agree with the claim. This is a problem because it gives the appearance that the claim is supported by far more people than it actually is (not that the number of people who support the claim makes it any more true). If the goal is to accurately assess the probability of a claim, agreeing with the claim just to be “nice” is antithetical to the goal. I can’t tell you how many times I read my Facebook friend’s posts and cringe. In most cases, I make the conscious decision not to engage, which is fine. This is displaying judgment and diplomacy. This is a problem when similar claims are made in friendly discussion or debate, and we don’t cringe; rather, we find ourselves nodding in acceptance or even just accepting the claim in an unconscious attempt to avoid conflict. To combat the courtesy bias, remind yourself frequently that good people can and do say stupid things.