chapter sevenOur Brain and Biases
‘There is no neutrality. There is only greater or lesser awareness of one's bias.’
PHYLLIS ROSELiterary critic, essayist, biographer and educator (1942–)
ABOUT THIS CHAPTER
Being biased is a human phenomenon. We are all biased and we use our biases every day, often unconsciously, to help us make decisions.
Biases are the beliefs, attitudes and preferences that we form about ourselves and other people. We pick up these biases through our culture, background and education and they are pervasive influences over how we see the world and make decisions.
Our brain has to predict rapidly what is safe or harmful in our environment. To help our brain do this, our biases quickly shortcut new information. The problem is that they intervene so quickly that we may make a bad choice or overlook a crucial detail.
This chapter explains how biases work in our brain and shows how our biases may distort our thinking or prevent us from forming an accurate view of the world.
Part 1: The science explained
A psychological immune system in the brain
Our biases are human adaptive responses to our environment and provide an immediate frame of reference for fast interpretation and action.
In a sense, our biases are our brain's psychological immune system and prevent us from decision paralysis.1 If we were unable to respond quickly to our surroundings we would not have been able to survive as a species.
FIGURE 7.1: We are all biased
Why are our biases so ...
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