An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity - always yours

192 COGNITIVE BIASES
- Avoid framing biases by adopting different perspectives. Formulate a
question or problem in different ways. Think about how other people
would response.
- Actively consider contrary evidence and unpopular alternatives. Think
about both pros and cons. Talk to people who disagree with you.
- Be systematic. Use reliable methods and data where possible, such as
using information about statistics and probability or adopting a reliable
framework for thinking about a problem.
- Plan ahead and allow enough time to understand a problem. Avoid
hasty decisions.
• Use feedback and experience: Record the reasons for your decisions so you
can understand why you succeed or fail later on, and use the information to
improve yourself. Learn from role models.
• If you can't beat them, join them: We can turn cognitive biases to our advantage
by exploiting weaknesses in others. Many cognitive biases have
obvious implications for marketing, management, social policy, and many
other areas. 2
Cognitive biases and gender discrimination
Although equality between men and women is now widely accepted,
gender stereotypes and biases can still have a huge impact. The result is
that especially for high-status jobs, women are less likely to be hired and
have a lower salary, fewer promotions, and less authority. In academia,
for example, more women get papers accepted by journals when the
reviewers do not know the identity of the author. Similarly, whether a
CV has a male or female name makes a big difference to the evaluation
of the CV, even if everything else in the CV is identical. In fact, when
people make hiring decisions, gender discrimination actually increases
when they are asked whether they are making an objective hiring decision
(Uhlmann and Cohen, 2007). This suggests that even when people
honestly claim they support gender equality, their behavior and decisions
can still be affected by powerful unconscious biases.
2 See for example Thaler and Sunstein (2008). The book offers lots of suggestions about how cognitive
biases can be a positive force.