Bias

First, let's look at bias. Explicit bias refers to attitudes and beliefs (positive or negative) that we consciously or deliberately hold and express about a person or group. We are aware of our explicit biases.

Meanwhile, implicit bias includes attitudes and beliefs (positive or negative) about other people, ideas, issues, or institutions that occur outside of our conscious awareness and control, which affect our opinions and behavior. Everyone has implicit biases they have developed over a lifetime, but we can work to combat and change these biases.

It is important to remember that explicit and implicit biases can sometimes contradict each other.

Just a few examples of common biases include:

• The Dunning-Kruger Effect - the difficulty of knowing what you know and what you don’t know.
  • Example: Thinking steak tastes best when it is cooked well without ever tasting it cooked in other ways.
• Confirmation bias - considering only what you believe to be true.
  • Example: Thinking being vegetarian is better for the environment, and so ignoring facts about environmentally friendly animal farming.
• Self-serving bias - attributing success to yourself and failure to others or to outside causes.
  • Example: Being proud of your skill when you cook something well but blaming a faulty oven if you burn the food.
• Optimism and Pessimism - overestimating positive and underestimating negative possibilities.
  • Example: Thinking it is very unlikely that you won't get salmonella from raw chicken.
• Sunk cost - fear of getting nothing in return for effort.
  • Example: Being hesitant to throw out a ruined meal because you have spent so long making it.
• Negativity bias - weighing a negative outcome more than a positive outcome.
  • Example: Thinking it is very likely that you will get food poisoning from eating a carrot.
• Decline bias - favoring the past over the present.
  • Example: Saying that since people in the past used to eat more beef than in the present, that means society is in decline.
• The Backfire effect - holding on to a wrong belief even more, also known as “face-saving.”
  • Example: Refusing to admit that you are wrong, even when faced with a lot of reliable evidence to the contrary.
• Fundamental attribution - error making assumptions by stereotyping.
  • Example: Assuming all Indians are vegetarian.
• In-group bias - favoring information from your group.
  • Example: Trusting a friend's opinion on a new restaurant more than that of a professional food critic.
• The Forer Effect - holding on to what is meaningful to you and discarding the rest.
  • Example: Believing that vegetables make you sick based on one incident, even though you have eaten vegetables other times without issues.