Can you spot these cognitive biases?

- We all have cognitive biases. Isn't this a bad thing? Yes. And no. cognitive biases aren't totally bad because their mental simplifier helping us process things quickly and easily, like detecting hostility in your boss's voice. The bad reputation of cognitive biases comes from when they go undetected and leave us susceptible to poor judgment. Let's reduce the chances of this happening. First, we'll identify common cognitive biases and tips for spotting them. Then we'll look at scenarios to see if you can spot them. As we go through these biases, if what comes immediately to mind are examples of other people's biases instead of your own. That's a hint that you've spotted the blind spot bias in yourself. The blind spot bias makes spotting biases and others easier and more likely than spotting biases in ourselves. You may have heard of the confirmation bias. It's in the news a lot lately. It makes us seek evidence that confirms our pre-existing beliefs and reject evidence that does not. Regardless of the quality of the evidence. If you rarely hear good arguments from people that you disagree with, that may be a hint that your confirmation bias is afoot. Affect heuristic makes us rely on our emotional feelings good or bad to make decisions that should optimally be evaluated more analytically. Look out for sneaky substitutions like thinking that Tesla is a good company to invest in because you like Teslas. False consensus bias makes us overestimate how much others agree with us. Look out for dismissing people who disagree as being defective in their thinking. The clustering illusion makes us seek patterns in random events and misrepresent correlation with cause. Look out for relying too heavily on trends and stories that seemed to make sense, for example, thinking that Dylane's promotion caused the recent drop in sales because she's no longer motivated to work hard. The availability heuristic makes us overestimate the likelihood of events that come easily to mind. Look out for thinking things are more likely to happen like plane crashes or divorce after seeing lots of articles about them. Now, see if you can spot the bias in each of these five scenarios. Feel free to pause after each scenario to see if you guess right. Number one, I like their product. We should invest in them. (Upbeat music) If you guessed Affect Heuristic, you're right. Number two, we look For and found plenty of evidence that the tool recreated is the most effective. That's confirmation bias. Number three, I just read a report about people who've been run over in parking lots while looking at their phones. The likelihood of being run over in parking lots has gone up. Could this be availability heuristic? Four, Susan's last six proposals were quickly adopted. I bet on Susan's proposal because she's on a streak. Did you spot the clustering illusion? Number five, Bruce knew that nobody wanted to hear Tyrell's presentation. You spotted it, false consensus bias. Now that you've played with these scenarios, create scenarios with your team to practice spotting these cognitive biases.