Cognitive Bias

A student may ask us:

What is cognitive bias, and how do I keep it from affecting my thesis or academic research project?

Our reply might be:

Cognitive is an adjective meaning having to do with conscious thought, reasoning, or remembering. It derives from a Latin term meaning to know. So if we have a bias, or prejudice, favoritism, or unfairness in our thinking, it is called a cognitive bias?

The student may wonder:

Why is it so sure that I have cognitive biases?

We may say:

Most people have cognitive biases, which are the results of the way we think or our experiences over the years. We tend to draw certain conclusions, and base our own future actions on what we have seen in the past.

The student may add:

Well, what’s wrong with that?

We may reply:

Cognitive biases in everyday life may help us to avoid problems. But cognitive biases in our thesis or academic research may be a problem because we are supposed to have open minds. We should not be overly influenced by what we have seen before. Otherwise we may never recognize the importance of something new.

In order to notice and accept new data if it appears, and realize that it may be significant, we should not stick too closely to what has happened before.

The student may next inquire:

What are some examples of cognitive bias?

Our answer:

Well, for instance, there is anthropocentric thinking, or making comparison to human things when we are writing about biology or other subjects that are not human. Just because certain things happen with people does not mean they happen to cells or other organisms.

Other examples:

Anthropomorphism or personification: when we give human feelings or ideas to animals, objects, and abstract concepts. It is important not to confuse our feelings as people with how we think animals or objects may respond to certain situations.

Automation bias: Sometimes computers and other automated systems provide such convenience that we may reply on them too much, even for making decisions that we as researchers should be making. If we just present lots of data produced by a computer without sorting it out, that can result in too much information cancelling out correct interpretations.

Bandwagon effect: The noun bandwagon once referred to a wagon carrying a band in a parade. Now bandwagons are mainly mentioned in terms of actions and approaches that are fashionable or popular now. The expression to jump on the bandwagon is to do as others are doing. So researchers who are motivated by the bandwagon effect tend to do as other researchers are doing. They feel safer being with the crowd, and think they are more likely to succeed if they following everyone else’s approach. However, in research, sometimes it helps to have different approaches to the same questions, since if we all have the same style of research, it is likely that we will all arrive at the same results, instead of new or unexpected findings. To be creative researchers, it is better not to do exactly what everyone else is doing.

Courtesy bias: If we think that some research finding may offend some people, we may hesitate to write it down. Instead, we might prefer a more socially acceptable result, even if it is less accurate.

Exaggerated expectation: If we expect or announce more extreme results than what our research actually proves, this means that we have exaggerated how unexpected the findings were. Sometimes researchers make their results look more dramatic, to justify the time and money they spent in finding them.

Expectation bias: Some researchers tend to believe and publish data that agree with what they expected an experiment to produce. They also tend to not believe data that may disagree with their expectations. For this reason, new findings may take a while to be valued, since if they contradict what we expected, we may automatically think they are not important.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)