The Bias in Our Narratives: A Closer Look

As a personal and professional development coach, I like to think of myself as a rational person, making my decisions based on logic and reason that is informed by emotion. But the truth is, no matter how aware I am or how much knowledge I have about making great decisions, they are still frequently influenced by cognitive biases that are operating below the surface of my conscious awareness.

This is true for all of us and these biases can skew our perception of reality, leading us to make decisions that may not be in our best interest.

What is a Cognitive Bias?

Our world is filled with information that often arrives in too large a quantity for us to process, is too ambiguous in its meaning, can’t be processed fast enough in the time we have, and more than our brains can remember afterward. To deal with these problems in processing information, our brain creates mental shortcuts to deal with it all. It will look for what it thinks is the most important, the biggest risk, or the most likely to be correct, so that we can survive the situation we are in.

A cognitive bias is what happens when our brain uses one of these shortcuts and gets it wrong. We end up with an error in thinking that affects the decisions and judgments we make. All of us. In fact the smartest among us are not only not spared from these faulty mental shortcuts, research has shown that we sometimes experience them more than the average.

To put it another way, these biases in question are a result of our brain’s attempt to simplify information processing. They’re shortcuts that our mind uses to speed up decision-making, which is entirely necessary, can also lead us astray.

The Four Causes

Lets break down the reasons for cognitive biases again into what we will try to use to combat these biases in our narratives later on…

Too Much Information: The world is filled with an overwhelming amount of data. To manage this, our brains use shortcuts to filter and focus on the most relevant information. This leads to biases that help us ignore the unnecessary and concentrate on what seems important.

Not Enough Meaning: Sometimes, the information we receive is ambiguous or incomplete. Our brains fill in the gaps by using patterns and past experiences, which can lead to biases. This helps us create a coherent picture from fragmented information.

Need to Act Fast: In many situations, quick decision-making is crucial. Cognitive biases allow us to make rapid judgments and decisions without needing to analyze every detail meticulously. These biases provide us with mental shortcuts that enable swift action.

What Should We Remember?: Our brains can’t remember everything, so they prioritize certain information. Cognitive biases help determine what is most likely to be useful in the future, influencing what we remember and what we forget. This selective memory helps us retain the most relevant information for future use.

Examples of Cognitive Biases

We now understand the why of Cognitive Biases, so let’s have a look at a few examples of how these biases present themselves and how they can influence our decisions.

Here are the Wikipedia entries for three of the most common biases:

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs.

Wikipedia Article

Anchoring Bias

The anchoring effect is a psychological phenomenon in which an individual’s judgements or decisions are influenced by a reference point or “anchor” which can be completely irrelevant. For example, an individual may be more likely to purchase a car if it is placed alongside a more expensive model (the anchor). Prices discussed in negotiations that are lower than the anchor may seem reasonable, perhaps even cheap to the buyer, even if said prices are still relatively higher than the actual market value of the car.

Wikipedia Article

Availability Heuristic

The availability heuristic, also known as availability bias, is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. This heuristic, operating on the notion that, if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions not as readily recalled, is inherently biased toward recently acquired information.

(The wikipedia article didn’t have an example so here is one from ChatGPT: After seeing news about a recent plane crash, a person believes that air travel is very dangerous, even though statistically, it’s one of the safest modes of transportation. This belief is influenced by the recent, memorable news event.)

Wikipedia Article

The Impact of Biases on Our Narratives

At Untangled Narrative LLC, the focus we place on Cognitive Biases is in how humans often take the warped information caused by a bias and end up working it into a Narrative or story that they tell themselves, and in that retelling becomes even harder to untangle.

Untangling Narratives caused by Cognitive biases

It is impossible to completely avoid cognitive biases, but we can be aware of what causes them and use that in our process of untangling our narratives.

This usually involves tracing the tangled narrative backward to the bias at its core, then slowly working through that bias to the original information/source. Once we know the source of the information we can slowly move through it step by step until we see the error free version that we can act upon. Finally, we craft a new more helpful and more accurate story to accompany us in our future decision making.

Challenge to the Reader: start watching for these biases in your decision making, and look closely for any stories that might support these biases and cause them to become Tangled Narratives. What appears?