Mindbugs! How Your Psychological Biases Are Impairing Your Decision Making.
Our brains are very much capable of doing some remarkable things: from your working memory and lightning-fast reactions to emotion regulations and Theory of Mind (having an insight into other people's perspectives). We like to think of our brain as a magnificent, powerful, and mysterious thing that has untapped potential. As seen in movies, popular culture theorizes that only 10% of our brain is actively used; and when you find a way to utilize a portion of the unused brain, you develop some kind of superhuman capabilities. Though science is unable to evaluate the precise amount of day-to-day brain usage, MRI has shown that the majority portion of the brain is active throughout the day —meaning we just about use our whole brain, consciously or subconsciously, in our daily activities.
As powerful as the brain is, it is not perfect. Similar to a car's side view mirror, it has its blindspots. However, given that the mind does the majority of its work unconsciously, the tricky thing about the brain's blindspot is that it uses its perspective and worldview to make up for that blindspot -making it almost impossible to spot without awareness.
In this article, we will be exploring one of these blindspots called "Mindbugs." As Psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald defined, Mindbugs are the ingrained habits of thought that lead to errors in how we perceive the world.
Availability Heuristic
If I were to ask you, which of the following has a higher mortality case in the US?
Murder vs. Suicide
Car Accidents vs. Malignant Neoplasms (Cancerous Tumors)
People without in-depth insights on the mortality rates will likely pick Murder for 1 and Car Accident for 2. The reality is that Murder accounts for 17,000 deaths in the US, while Suicide accounts for 470,000; while Car accidents have a death count of roughly 170,000 and Neoplasms about 600,000.
This is your brain's Mindbug at work. More specifically, it is the brain's availability heuristic. It is when one instance comes more easily to mind, our brain automatically assume that instance is more prevalent. Our modern media is more likely to showcase homicides and fatal accidents as they are often deemed to be more "story-worthy" than their respective latter option.
Our assumptions caused by availability heuristics can often lead to routine mistakes in judgment and these errors can be paired by a great decision cost.
Anchoring
In 2006, a professor at MIT conducted a mini-experiment in which he first had his students write down the last 2 digits of their social security then he had the students estimate the price of a certain item. What he then found was that the higher the last 2 numbers of the student's social security, the higher the estimated price. This is also a form of Mindbug; called anchoring. Anchoring states that to make an assumption, the mind finds whatever information that is immediately available as a reference point. Meaning, when faced with an item with an unfamiliar price point, the mind uses the last two digits of the person’s social security (that he or she has just written down) as a reference point.
Another example in which anchoring can be at play is when a person is trying to buy a new home. If the buyer is first told that a house is worth a value of $350,000, he or she may assume the house to be worth more than a house listed at $300,000 despite the two houses appearing the same at first glance. The key here is to closely examine your decision making, interpret all the embedded value, and determine if the $50,000 difference is worth the cost.
Social Mindbugs
As unfortunate as it is, we judge people. And we do so fairly quickly. When we see three people walking towards us, we automatically start to analyze whether these people are trustworthy and if we should be alert. These pieces of information are formed in less than a second with very limited information, and we often are incompletely unaware of how right or wrong these judgments can be.
When we see a face or skin color that is similar to our own, our brain automatically evokes a feeling of trust. Some facial characteristics, such as a babyface, also contribute to how much trust we have in a person. I am sure we call can agree that a person’s babyface has no relationship with his or her trustworthiness; but our brain subconsciously makes that judgment anyways. This is because the mind uses, as Banaji and Greenwald put it, memberships in social groups as the contextual cues that generate an unconscious social interface.
This social mindbug can lead us to trust in people we shouldn't trust, and distrust people who are actually trustworthy. These errors in judgement and inappropriate distrust can lead to a wide range of tragedies. As I alway emphasize, your perspective is your reality, and a perspective of unfair distrust can lead to the mistreatment of others.
