The Importance of Biases in Life

No human is perfect. All of us have flaws, imperfections and experience logical failings. Psychology is the study that helps identify these problematic areas, understand what makes people behave the way they do and how mental processes affect daily life. Arguably, the most common pitfalls everyone experiences are major biases.

They seem harmless enough but when applied on a larger scale, they can prove to be problematic. In this paper, I will define the major biases that we discussed in class (perceiving order in random events, hindsight bias and judgemental overconfidence), provide an example of one of them from my personal life and also discuss Tiana Lambrozo's opinion about anticipated regret and omission bias.

The first one I'd like to discuss is hindsight bias, also called the "I knew it all along" effect.

This is the inclination to believe that a person could have predicted an event before it happened, usually based on some arbitrary occurrence or occurrences leading up to it, that have no evidence of influencing the event.

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It happens even to people who are aware of it, for example, me. Last quarter, I didn't study for any exams, felt incredibly nervous while taking them and couldn't predict my results in the slightest. But when I got mostly A's on them, I assured myself that "I knew it would happen, I only fail them when I actually try and study for them", even though I had no idea what the results would be. Consequently, it only discouraged me from studying for future exams because, in all probability, I will "luck out" again, even though that is blatantly wrong.

NowI understand that hindsight bias was skewing my perception of how exams actually work and probably would have hindered me academically. That's why I learned from this experience and I am determined to never let it happen again. Another bias that most people often experience is perceiving order in random events.

People instinctively look for patters and tend to believe that completely random things have to be in some kind of order. For example, when tossing a coin, most believe that the chances of tossing heads grow with every time you toss tails and vice versa, even though the odds are the same 50/50 every time. This bias is one of the main reasons why casinos and lotteries are so popular, as people just can't help hoping that “just one more try" will increase their chance of winning.

That makes it more a bit more dangerous than hindsight bias but not as harmful as judgmental overconfidence, which I am about to define. In short, judgemental overconfidence is the tendency to believe that one is better at a certain task or knows more about a certain subject than he actually does. This leads to a person believing he is absolutely sure about something he's doing, while, in reality, he's making a mistake. However, these are not the only biases that people are prone to have. Another big one is omission bias.

Tiana Lombrozo discusses it in her article Psychological Biases Play A Part In Vaccination Decisions (2015) and describes it as being one of the major factors that contribute to the anti-vaccination movement by making parents believe that there is a moral difference "between bringing about some outcome by acting versus by failing to act".

Lombrozo states that it makes people think that by not doing anything instead of doing something, they are less responsible for the consequences, even if the outcome is the same. According to the article, parents who do not vaccinate their children tend to exhibit omission bias because they think that vaccinating a child is more dangerous than not doing so, may prefer a more naturalistic approach to it or experience anticipated regret. Lombrozo establishes that anticipated regret is the fear of regretting the consequences if a decision to act was made.

However, she clarifies that it could go both ways, as other parents "worry more about the regret they would feel if their failure to vaccinate led to a negative outcome". I happen to completely agree with Lombrozo's assessment of the situation because she provides reputable sources for her research, is a psychology professor and makes a compelling argument. To sum up, biases are not a thing that helps one out in daily life. They mislead people and force them to make mistakes. However, some, like anticipated regret, might help others do the right thing. The only things that can help fight biases is information spread and educating people about them.