Researchers Find Everyone Has a Bias Blindspot

By Shilo Rea
Carnegie Mellon University
Originally published June 8, 2015

Here are two excerpt:

The most telling finding was that everyone is affected by blind spot bias — only one adult out of 661 said that he/she is more biased than the average person. However, they did find that the participants varied in the degree in which they thought they were less biased than others. This was true irrespective of whether they were actually unbiased or biased in their decision-making.

(cut)

“People seem to have no idea how biased they are. Whether a good decision-maker or a bad one, everyone thinks that they are less biased than their peers,” said Carey Morewedge, associate professor of marketing at Boston University. “This susceptibility to the bias blind spot appears to be pervasive, and is unrelated to people’s intelligence, self-esteem, and actual ability to make unbiased judgments and decisions.”

They also found that people with a high bias blind spot are those most likely to ignore the advice of peers or experts, and are least likely to learn from de-biasing training that could improve the quality of their decisions.

The entire article is here.

Believing that life is fair might make you a terrible person

By Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian
Originally posted on February 3, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

What’s truly unsettling about the just-world bias is that while it can have truly unpleasant effects, these follow from what seems like the entirely understandable urge to believe that things happen for a reason. After all, if we didn’t all believe that to some degree, life would be an intolerably chaotic and terrifying nightmare in, which effort and payback were utterly unrelated, and there was no point planning for the future, saving money for retirement or doing anything else in hope of eventual reward. We’d go mad. Surely wanting the world to make a bit more sense than that is eminently forgivable?

Yet, ironically, this desire to believe that things happen for a reason leads to the kinds of positions that help entrench injustice instead of reducing it.

The entire article is here.

Editor's Note: My suspicion is that this has a direct application to therapist's views of patients.  Self-reflection and understanding biases help to reduce negative influences in our lives.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along? The Uncertain Biological Basis of Morality

By Robert Wright
The Atlantic
November 2013

The article is really a review of several books.  However, it is not a formal book review, but compares and contrasts efforts by those studying morality, psychology, and biology.  Here are some excerpts:


The well-documented human knack for bigotry, conflict, and atrocity must have something to do with the human mind, and relevant parts of the mind are indeed coming into focus—not just thanks to the revolution in brain scanning, or even advances in neuroscience more broadly, but also thanks to clever psychology experiments and a clearer understanding of the evolutionary forces that shaped human nature. Maybe we’re approaching a point where we can actually harness this knowledge, make radical progress in how we treat one another, and become a species worthy of the title Homo sapiens.

(cut)

...the impulses and inclinations that shape moral discourse are, by and large, legacies of natural selection, rooted in our genes. Specifically, many of them are with us today because they helped our ancestors realize the benefits of cooperation. As a result, people are pretty good at getting along with one another, and at supporting the basic ethical rules that keep societies humming.

(cut)

When you combine judgment that’s naturally biased with the belief that wrongdoers deserve to suffer, you wind up with situations like two people sharing the conviction that the other one deserves to suffer. Or two groups sharing that conviction. And the rest is history. Rwanda’s Hutus and Tutsis, thanks to their common humanity, shared the intuition that bad people should suffer; they just disagreed—thanks to their common humanity—about which group was bad.

The entire article is here.

Context and Moral Behavior

By Bradley Cornelius
Inside Higher Ed: The Academic Minute
Originally published April 1, 2013

Dr. Sam Sommers – Context and Moral Behavior

Context matters.  This may not sound like a profound conclusion, but behavioral science reveals that it’s one we often overlook in pondering human nature.  We hear the news about the latest fraud case or the crowd that stood idly by with an emergency going on right in front of it, and we chalk up the events to bad apples—simply people with poor personalities behaving poorly.

But this worldview oversimplifies.  How do we most accurately predict whether individuals will rise to the occasion in an emergency?  By examining the specifics of the situation.  In a famous study at Princeton, seminary students had to walk across campus to give a talk on an assigned topic.  Researchers arranged for students to pass by a shabbily dressed actor stooped over and coughing in a doorway.  Fewer than half stopped to help, in some instances literally stepping over a man in apparent need on their way to discuss the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Personality differences weren’t the best predictors of their behavior.  Rather, the simple matter of whether or not they were running late was most influential.

This hidden power of situations has far-reaching implications.  We’re more influenced by the actions of those around us than we’d like to believe.  Even our private sense of identity is highly context-dependent.  Or consider research in my lab on the observable effects of a group’s diversity on its performance.  How does diversity influence groups?  It depends.  Create a situation in which people are primarily focused on making a good impression and their anxiety tends to undermine communication and social skills.  Tell them instead to focus on maximizing task performance and not only does performance improve, but people also wind up getting along better.  In short, human nature is far more malleable and context-dependent than we assume it is.

The entire Academic Minute is here, including an audio recording.

Doing the Ethical Thing May Be Right, but It Isn’t Automatic

By ALINA TUGEND

The New York Times

FOR the last few weeks, the sex abuse scandal at Penn State and the harassment claims against the Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain have been fodder for discussion at my house. The same is true, I assume, around the country.

Putting aside the specifics of each case, one question that has come up is, “What would I do?”

That is, if I saw what seemed to be a crime or unethical act committed by a respected colleague, coach, teacher or friend, would I storm in and stop it? Would I call the authorities immediately? Would I disregard the potentially devastating impact on my job or workplace or beloved institution?

Absolutely, most of us would probably reply. I think so, others might respond. And the most honest answer? I don’t know.

As much as we would like to think that, put on the spot, we would do the right — and perhaps even heroic — thing, research has shown that that usually isn’t true.

The rest of the article is here.