An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity - always yours

COMBATING COGNITIVE BIASES 191
• Most students consider themselves to be more popular than average (Zuckerman
and Jost, 2001).
• In a spelling test, subjects who think they are 100% certain of their answers
are correct only 80% of the time (Adams and Adams, 1960).
• More than 50% of students taking a reasoning test think their results will be
in the top half of the group. Furthermore, those who performed worst overestimated
their results by the largest margin (Kruger and Dunning, 2002).
• People generally rate themselves as more objective than average, and as being
less susceptible to biases than their peers (Pronin et al., 2002).
It has been suggested that this above-average effect is particularly prominent
when we think a certain skill is easy for us. If you think something is difficult for
you (juggling or computer programming), you might underestimate your ability
instead. In general then, to get an accurate picture of our abilities, we should rely
on objective measures rather than subjective perception.
The above-average effect is closely related to the optimism bias, a tendency for
people to be overoptimistic about their plans. This includes students overestimating
the number of job offers, or underestimating the likelihood of failing an exam.
During economic crises, many financial analysts overestimate company profits
and underestimate the duration of a recession. The optimism bias is often at work
when in a large project, cost and completion time exceed original estimates. In
a recent study, researchers find when people feel more powerful they underestimate
by a larger margin the time it takes for them to complete a task! But the good
news is that when people have to give two estimates—one in an ideal world and
another for how they will actually perform, people are able to come up with more
realistic predictions.
Power seems to affect our judgments as well. An intriguing recent experiment
indicates that power induces moral hypocrisy in the form of double standards.
When people have power and think they are entitled to it, they are harsher when
it comes to judging other people's moral lapses, but they are more willing to let
themselves off when they do the same thing (Lammers et al., 2010). One might
wonder about the implications for politicians and managers.
20.5 COMBATING COGNITIVE BIASES
In this chapter we have looked at only a limited number of cognitive biases. It
would of course be nice if we could minimize their effects on us. But since most
of them affect our judgments without our conscious awareness, this is not easy to
do. Here are some concrete ways to fight back.
• Enhance your awareness: Learn more about when cognitive biases happen
and how to lessen their impact.
• Think harder: Think more carefully and systematically. For example: