We know the brain can do a lot- more than we will ever be able to understand- and is the most complex thing in our universe. What we don’t think about is how our brains are our best friends and fiercest protectors. As we go about everyday life, the brain is consistently and unfailingly working to keep a proverbial pair of rose-tinted glasses over our eyes. Beneath the level of our awareness so we don’t even know it, our brain is making things better for us, making us comfortable. Even though living doesn’t always feel comfortable, we will never know what discomfort is because our brain simply will not allow it. Everything the human brain does is self-serving and for our own benefit. This sounds like a possibly ominous thing, but it’s the opposite of that. Our sense of identity is as fragile as it is important and everywhere we go, everything we do and everyone we meet could potentially threaten the self-esteem that we have spent our entire lives constructing. But the brain will not allow us to be exposed to these threats, and it does this using cognitive biases.
Through describing various biases and how they operate, I will demonstrate the myriad ways in which our brains use them to protect us.
The Illusion of Control
Humans have the tendency to believe that they can control or at the very least influence what the outcome will be, to believe that they have the ability to exert more control over their environment than they ever realistically could. As a result of this cognitive bias, money is gambled away, unwise trades are made and consequences be damned. Although most people will agree that there an overlap between skill and luck, the distinction is only clear in principle. In situations requiring skill, there is a causal link between behaviour and outcome. Therefore, success in skill tasks can be controlled. However, success in luck or chance situations is out of our control. We just can’t see it that way.
Our brain has created for us an illusion of control so that people assume to have skills in chance situations. Studies have shown that people deny that chance is involved at all until they need it to be- until we need to have someone or something else to blame. Illusion of control, in my opinion, was created by our brains in order for us to live under the pretence that the universe in which we exist is not governed entirely by chaos. By keeping up this illusion, our brain keeps us from having to confront the idea that everything is random, that therefore all our efforts and skills and predictions and tribulations are meaningless. This bias is helpful to us because it alleviates our overall discomfort with ambiguity and uncertainty, letting us convince ourselves that we can control and predict the outcome of altogether uncertain future events. It also lets us continue believing that we will be able to cope with whatever life throws at us. That’s good for us too, because we’ll never know how we’re going to cope until we have something unexpected to cope with, and no good can come from living with the belief that we will be unable to cope.
Better-Than-Average Effect
Most of us believe we are smarter and more hard-working than average. We cannot all be correct. I was confronted by the truth of this bias when I was analysing the results of my undergraduate dissertation. One of the tasks the participants in my study had to do was to look at the bell curve graph illustrating the population’s IQ scores and give themselves estimates for where they believed themselves to be on the graph with regards to different subscales of emotional intelligence- relationships, motivation, empathy, optimism, emotional management, self-regulation etc. They were informed that the majority of the population will score approximately 100, and if you have a score of below 70 or above 145 you are extraordinary in that so few people will score this way. I was shocked to find that all the participants with the exceptions of myself and only two other people gave self-estimates that unfailingly exceeded 115, and often people scored themselves 145 for every scale. These findings were accidental but demonstrated that people do indeed believe that their scores are not just better than other people’s but the best, and therefore they are one of the gifted few. Of course, the differences between self-estimates and actual scores was enormous and it’s illogical to suggest that all participants could be among the gifted few because it would turn that few into a lot.
In particular, when it comes to the issue of our moral character, such as honesty and trustworthiness, we have such a disproportionate sense of our own superiority that jailed criminals consider themselves more moral than citizens who haven’t broken the law.
It isn’t hard to see why we have this cognitive bias. It’s another defence mechanism created by our brains to protect our fragile human egos. When it comes to moral traits, we are especially blind and especially irrational. We hold inaccurate and irrational views of ourselves that are overly rosy because they make us feel better about who we are. There may also be an evolutionary explanation for why we downplay the moral qualities of others in comparison to our own- for the purpose of survival, it’s safer to assume someone is less trustworthy than you.
Confirmation Bias
We all know how arguments work. What we aren’t aware of is that our unconscious minds have distorted the evidence before we’ve thought about it. Confirmation bias is our tendency to seek out, interpret, favour and remember information so that our pre-existing beliefs are confirmed. People demand a high standard of evidence for ideas they don’t like and a much lower standard for ideas they prefer. For some ideas, their reaction is- Can I believe this? For other ideas- Must I?
As humans we have an excessive drive for consistency. The motivation to create for ourselves a cohesive and coherent, consistent narrative even when we have experienced change may prevent us from fairly evaluating new information that challenges our narrative. Famous research showed that people’s memories of autobiographical events can be inaccurate when they are asked to recall times in the past when their beliefs were different- they seem to forget who they once were and that they underwent any change of mind or heart and believe they have always been the way that they are in the present.
Partisan Bias
A general assumption about politics is that liberals are more, well, liberal than conservatives. But there is evidence to show that liberals are just as prone to bias as conservatives. Some recent research demonstrates that both liberals and conservatives in equal measure are prone to partisan bias- they rapidly and easily accept evidence when it supports their existing beliefs. It’s not a puzzle, the reason why we have this bias. When evidence corroborates views we already have and are comfortable with, with this bias our brains give us less reason to be sceptical and discerning when doing so might shake our foundations. The brain is exceedingly protective, it’s amazing that we have this fail-safe to protect us from having to doubt our established beliefs, but also shocking that our identities are indeed so fragile that losing conviction in the beliefs we have becomes a threat the brain has to protect us from. Nietzsche argued that conviction is equivalent to ignorance and/or laziness and that intelligence shows through doubting what we know and believe and one another.
SPOT Effect
There’s a new bias about the town of cognition research. Gregg et al. showed that simply asking people to imagine that a theory is their own will bias them to believe that the theory is true. They called it the Spontaneous Preference For Own Theories (SPOT) Effect.
The studies sound like they were fun. Hundreds of people were asked to imagine a fictional planet in a faraway solar system that is inhabited by a variety of creatures, some of which are predators and the rest prey. They were told to focus on two species- Niffities and Luppites- and asked to imagine that they had their own theory that the Niffities were the predators and the Luppites were their prey, or else to imagine that somebody named Alex had this theory. They were then presented with a series of facts relevant to the theory, a few mildly supportive of the theory, but the last providing strong evidence against the theory. After each piece of evidence in the series was presented, they were asked to rate how likely it was that the theory was true or not true. The findings show that the simple fact they had been asked to imagine the theory belonged to them or someone else could influence how they interpreted the theory. When it was their own theory, they were more stubborn and persistent in believing it was true, even when faced with increasing evidence to prove otherwise.
The truth is- it’s easy to induce bias in people, even when based on something with such little personal importance- and this truth, as stated by Gregg and colleagues, ‘only underlines how exquisitely sensitive to self-enhancing biases the human mind actually is.’
Fundamental Attribution Error
The FAE occurs when people place undue emphasis on internal characteristics of the agent such as their character or intention, rather than external factors, to explain other people’s behaviour. But when it comes to interpreting their own behaviour, they do the complete opposite. Another way to see this bias is as our tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are.
Here’s a simple example- Alice is driving and is cut off in traffic by Bob. Alice attributes Bob’s behaviour to his fundamental personality e.g. he is selfish, he is an unskilled driver etc. She does not think that it might be situational e.g. he is rushing to the hospital, he is late for a flight, there’s an emergency at home etc. Then, Alice makes the same mistake as Bob and instead of believing that she is selfish or unskilled, she excuses herself by blaming situational causes.
Isn’t it amazing how, when we have done well in an exam or test or some other evaluation of our knowledge or skill or aptitude, we congratulate ourselves for our smarts. But when we fail or get a below-par grade, it’s because we were drinking the night before, we had not slept properly, we didn’t have enough time to prepare. With this bias, our brains protect us from having to grapple with blaming ourselves or facing up to less-than-impressive facets of our personalities.
Defensive Pessimism
At this point you may be thinking- about FAE- that’s not true for me! You may be thinking- but I blame myself for everything! I’m my own harshest critic! If this is the case, then you are not someone who is naturally unbiased. You are actually also operating under the influence of bias.
This is called defensive pessimism. It’s a cognitive strategy so that people can prepare themselves for anxiety-provoking events. If you believe you are hard on yourself and look for reasons to take blame, your brain is still working for you to protect your sense of self. It means you set low expectations for how you are going to perform, regardless of how well you have done in the past. If your expectations are lower, you don’t have to disappoint yourself or anyone else. So your brain is still serving you, and you are just as self-serving. Which is, as we have seen, universal and not a bad thing but necessary for us to carry on.
Social Comparison Bias
Whether we are good with numbers or good with people or anything else, we all have something we feel we are particularly good at. From an early age, this strength becomes important for maintaining our self-esteem, which the brain, as we have seen, is fighting so tirelessly to protect from harm. As children and as adults, we tend to choose friends who excel on different dimensions than ourselves. This is a good way we can eliminate threat from our social circle.
A recent study asked participants to undergo verbal and mathematics tasks to which they were given false feedback. Then, they were presented with the scores achieved by others and asked to select one of them to join their team for a group coordination task that would involve throwing around a tennis ball. Those who were tricked into thinking that they had excelled on the maths test tended to choose the potential team member who was strong on verbal skills and weaker at maths. Those who were told they excelled on the verbal task made the opposite selection. It is not likely that they were just striving for a balanced team because neither maths nor verbal skills were relevant to a task that involves tossing around a ball.
Cone of Gaze
Biases can even manipulate perception. Our brains actually alter the way we perceive the minutiae of the world in order to make it easier to cope with. One study demonstrates this by inducing a feeling of loneliness among some participants- all participants take part in a virtual throw and catch game, believing that they are throwing and catching the virtual ball between themselves and two other people. For half of the participants, the two people they were led to believe they were playing with were programmed to only throw the ball between one another, excluding the participant. For the other half, the game went on between all three. For the former group, being left out of the game and believing that two other people were playing with one another but not with them induced a feeling of loneliness or social ostracisation. All participants were next asked to look at pictures of faces, all showing people with eyes looking away or towards them from different angles. They had to rate which faces were looking directly at them. Those who had been left out of the game and were feeling lonely were more likely to actually believe the eyes on the faces in those pictures were looking at them. What is called the ‘cone of gaze’- the extent to which eyes can stray from direct contact before we see them as being averted- expands following the social ostracisation. So it can be made up for by feeling we are, in fact, being looked at.
So it’s not just our beliefs and thoughts that are affected by biases, but also our perception. This study underlines the protective nature of the brain- when we feel lonely, it changes how we see people and their response to us by letting us believe we are being looked at and included.
Our brains are tricky and genius, powerful and crafty machines, constantly working to protect us from threats we don’t even realise are there. Even though the existence and prevalence of cognitive biases mean that the world we experience is not, in actuality, comes to us through many different filters, having been distorted or adapted or amended, we cannot escape them and wouldn’t want to if we could. I personally believe that we can access thoughts and realisations that may seem damaging to our self-esteem or sense of self, and that we can change our beliefs, and that we can, at the very least, be aware that we are fundamentally biased, but I additionally conclude this: if you are not ready to see it, your brain won’t make it visible; if you are not ready to know it, your brain will not let you.
