Discussion

1) Cognitive Bias Reflection Discussion

According to Simply Psychology, The definition of Cognitive Bias is the subconscious error in thinking that leads one person to misinterpret information. In this response, I am asked to discuss five most interesting facts that I have learned about my own flawed logic. In this semester, I am able to speak about the many flawed logics I have learned through this school semester. Learning and being aware of my own bias has helped me as a person, as well as help me social skills in order to interact. From the list of cognitive bias on Sergio Carreda, I have picked 5 that fit me the best: Pessimism Bias, Cryptomnesia,Third-Person Effect, Curse of Knowledge, and Halo effect.

Pessimism is the bias of overestimating the likelihood of bad experiences. Personally, I experience this due to my anxiety. Before a situation, I am always thinking of the worst case scenarios of situations just to lay it out just in case it happens. I believe I need to work on this and enjoy the moment a lot more than just scaring myself and always keeping it in the back of my mind. This personal bias tends to keep me more worried that this bad experience will happen, and not really enjoying the moment as I should be due to me always worrying about the experience that is going to be the outcome. 

Cryptomnesia is the thinking of a real memory, and mistaking it for your imagination. Recently, at work, I do a lot of paperwork and get through it really fast sometimes and I forget that I even do it. The next day I came in and thought I had a lot to do and stressed myself out, but I came in and realized I did most of the work the night before which made me more relaxed and stress free. This was a real memory and I happened to think that I rushed through all of it in my dream, just to realize I did do it all. This is a bias I struggle with due to the loss of memory from the night before. My memory is not that great, but I try to keep up with it in the case of thinking about what I did throughout the night.

The Third-Person Effect is the belief that the people around us are affected by mass media conjunction. People should never rely on social media unless it is from a reliable source. Personally, I have some friends that believe everything in social media whether there is a celebrity scandal, or a meteor hitting the earth. I believe that we should not give in to social media due to there being false information heard on it, or stories being wrapped up into something different other than the source itself. 

The curse of knowledge is the assumption of knowing something and assuming that everyone else knows it as well. When I am speaking about the knowledge of something I am aware about and I assume the people around me know the same. This is something I struggle with because many people have different interests and know different things I do not know about. In order to be aware of it means to just fix the way we act. 

The halo effect is the effect of putting positive and being positive. I see myself as this person because I believe in this method and it helps me be positive. If you put positive out in the world, you feel positive and happy. This is the way to live a happy life in my theory. In my opinion, this bias is able to make the world positive, as positive can be passed down to one another. 

These are the five cognitive biases that I believe that fit me well in order to better myself. There are many I could have chosen from as they all can make me a better person. Many people struggle with many different biases from one another, so it could never be the same with two people as the minds are different. These biases help me improve my social skills as well as make me who I am today. Being aware of how I am and putting more light upon it really helps an individual evaluate how they act.

WORKS CITED

Caredda, Sergio. “Being Aware of Cognitive Bias.” Sergio Caredda, 3 Feb. 2020, sergiocaredda.eu/people/being-aware-of-cognitive-bias.

Ruhl, Charlotte. “Simply Psychology.” What Is Cognitive Bias?, 4 May 2021, www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-bias.html.

2) Learning about my own biases has allowed me to be aware of how I treat and interact with others consciously and subconsciously. Sometimes we don’t realize how we treat or interact with people which is why it is important to be aware of biases. Also, by learning about my personal biases I have been able to improve my decision-making skills and have become more self-aware. Becoming more self-aware has allowed me to stop myself from being guided by my thoughts and emotions. Being guided by emotions can cause for bad decision making. Improving my decision-making skills however has allowed me to stop before and think about the effects of the choices I make.

The bandwagon fallacy is one of the many fallacies that I have committed many times in the past. When I was in middle school I asked my parents for a cell phone, but not just any cell phone. I wanted a cell phone called the sidekick because it was said to be the best phone at the time and all my friends had it. At the time I truly believed that I needed the sidekick because it was the best and everyone was getting it. I clearly committed the bandwagon fallacy because my friends convinced me that it was the best cell phone out there and that everyone had it.

My thought process is flawed in many ways. For starters, sometimes I have thinking errors know as cognitive distortions which is when what you are thinking does not match up with reality. This can cause many problems because it can lead to unhealthy behaviors/thoughts. For example, overgeneralization is my biggest thought process flaw. I work hard in school while being a full-time worker and student. Whenever I get a low grade, I get sad, and I end up putting too much pressure on myself to do better. Emotional reasoning is another thought process flaw that affects me at times. Sometimes my emotions get the best of me. An example of this would be whenever I feel guilty, I think I did something bad. Now that I am aware of these flawed thought processes, I can learn for ways to improve them.

A faulty claim that I have argued in the past is that the Mexican food in Laredo (my hometown) is the best. I had never tried Mexican food outside of my hometown until I moved out here. I ended up trying a “Mexican” restraint, but it was more Americanized. In this claim I have no proof other than my opinion that Laredo has the best Mexican food. A “fact” that I had clung onto that I do not believe is true anymore is that you need to have a degree to be successful in life. I think that if getting a degree is something that will allow you do what you dream of doing you should go for it. There is a lot of people that have become successful without getting a degree.

My bias has prevented me from seeing the truth many times. For example, when I purchase something on Amazon that I really want, and I read a bad review I won’t buy. That is called Negativity Bias and because I can’t get that one bad review out of my head I do not buy. This causes me to miss out on a product that potentially could’ve turned out great. Overall, learning about logical fallacies has allowed me to be aware of my biases and to find ways to not do it anymore.

3) When reflecting on my flawed logic, some factors come to mind. The first interesting thing I believe is how unaware I am that my logic is flawed. The second one is that if I do not know enough about a subject, I will never know that my logic is flawed. The third one is that I most likely believe I know more about a subject than I do. The fourth one is if I try to find out more about a topic, I might look for information that confirms what I believe to be true. The fifth is that by trying to be hyper-aware that I am not doing one through four, I am most likely overlooking something and am doing something in one through four. These are the most interesting factors I found in my flawed logic.

One thing I have learned about my own bias is that unless I am hyper-aware, it is not easy for me to identify when I'm being biased. It is a matter in which you have to be alert at all times, and still, there is a good chance that you are being biased. When I first learned about logical fallacies years ago, I analyzed myself more. Even after years of self-reflection, I still have a bias towards certain matters. I believe it has a lot to do with a person's lack of education in particular subjects. A person fills the holes they do not know with familiar things; therefore, it is tricky to acknowledge when your areas of bias are.

There are a couple of logical fallacies I have committed in the past. The first logical fallacy that comes to mind is the bandwagon fallacy. It is one that I did more when I was younger but can sometimes still sneak up on me. Another logical fallacy I committed was the anecdotal evidence logical fallacy. In current times it is easy to go based on someone else’s opinion, especially when it comes to online shopping, booking hotels, and things of that nature. We rely on reviews to purchase items. I have also committed the straw man logical fallacy. I remember a specific argument where I took what the other persons said out of context. These are the logical fallacies that come to mind that I know I committed.

The main way that my thought process can be flawed is that I trust my gut. However, when I trust my gut, it leads me to find information to back up whatever my gut is telling me. Therefore, I can fall into the confirmation bias logical fallacy. It is something that I noticed at work. I have supervised or managed most of my life. It is not ethically correct for a person in management to go based on a gut feeling for an employee. The person in leadership should be neutral to situations and give everyone the benefit of the doubt no matter what your gut is telling you. The people who work in management should make decisions based on facts and not emotions. For me, trusting my gut can lead my thought process to be flawed.

There are a few instances that I can remember when I argued faulty claims and clung to “facts” that have been proven wrong. One false claim that I asserted was that all people in Georgia working in retail at some capacity were rude. I used to fly to Georgia a couple of times per year. There were workers at the airport, rental car location, and restaurants that were rude. After my first two visits, I made a hasty generalization that people in Georgia were rude. I would discuss it with my co-workers that lived in Georgia, and they showed me not everyone in Georgia is rude. One fact that I know has been proven wrong is that people are “big boned.” I, however, beg to differ and still believe this. I am short, and at a size 30 waist in pants, I weighed far more than I should. There is no other explanation in my mind than being big-boned. Although I know doctors have said this is not true, in my mind, I cannot explain it any other way. These are the two instances that stand out the most with my experience of faulty claims and clinging to “facts” that are wrong.

The most recent memory I have of a bias preventing me from seeing the truth has to be with politics. In the past, I believed that everyone in the political party I associate with had good intentions. I thought we shared the same values if we believed in the same key matters. Therefore, I would find myself finding ways to defend their actions. I quickly learned that not everyone in my political party believes in what I do. It is okay for everyone not to share my personal views. It also does not mean that people are not dishonest. When I stopped thinking this way, I saw the areas that need to be corrected in my political party.

4) In a reflection of my thoughts, I am constantly fighting confirmation bias. Confirmation bias occurs when there is a direct influence of desires or belief. When someone wants an idea to become the truth, instead of doing the research they end up believing this to be true. This sums up pretty much wishful thinking. I am an incredibly passionate person and therefore sometimes that would hinder me from seeing things as they are. An example of this would be my past relationship partners. I would be so enthralled by them that I disregarded a lot of the red flags that would show up. As soon as they apologized or did something sweet for me, that confirmed that they were being loyal and truthful to me and I disregarded all the other horrible things that they've done. I pretty much like to believe what I want to believe regardless of the facts and data that arises as I am someone who is very stubborn. I’m learning day by day to take things as they are and not what I perceive them to be. 

My thought process sometimes has been flawed by my overly optimistic view point. This bias is called the Optimism Bias and it leads me to believe that I am less likely to fail or suffer from misfortunate events and likely to attain more success then my peers. This is something that is horrible to have in owning your own business because I’ve run into multiple situations where I’ve miscalculated due to optimism and not understanding the abilities of mine and my peers. There were projects that were planned for a very premature due date when we knew we couldn’t get it done at that allotted time. 

One of the faulty claims that I’ve argued is the Dunning-Krueger effect. The Dunning-Krueger effect is when you believe that you are smarter and more capable than you really are. I think it’s imperative to see yourself in a positive light rather than a negative one. Although I would say that with seeing yourself in a positive light comes a level of awareness. In order to recognize when you're not proficient or good in certain areas, you need to be able to self direct and assess where it went wrong and how you can learn from the misfortune. I think it is okay to look at yourself in a positive light as long as you’re self aware of when you need to make personal adjustments.

Going back to my relationship experience, the “facts” that I’ve ignored were usually tell-tale signs of their actions. They would do something that would in turn validate their horrible character but I would not believe it because I wanted things to work out so badly. So any type of nice things that they did for me, I would confirm that they are a good person and overlook the negative things that they have done.

With confirmation bias, it was extremely hard for me to see the actual character of a person for what it was instead of what I hoped for it to be. I gave people chances and forgiveness when they did not deserve it because I was hopeful that they would either change or their past actions were just an unfortunate circumstance for them and that’s why they did what they did. It prevented me from seeing the truth because I wasn’t able to fathom why people would hurt me if they had told me they loved me. Their actions didn’t qualify their statements so in turn, I would look for qualifying actions that confirmed their initial statements instead of seeing things for what they are.