Some human relate biases

1. Some human relate biases Subject-observer bias Cognitive bias

2. Some human related biases • whether your investigation is a survey or experiment involving people, you should be aware of frailties in • subjects/participants • observers/interviewers • designers and analysts • Researchers have done experiments to isolate [where possible] traits in human behaviour and judgement,

3. Subject-observer bias • Subject and observers respond differently to each other due to their • gender, age, ethnic, physical appearance, use of language, perceived social position, attitude • Try to neutralise these as much as possible • Observers should be selected to blend in, and trained to present themselves respectably and neutrally

4. Cognitive bias • is where human judgement and decisions differ from that expected from rational choice theory. • Some biases are specific to groups, some are specific to individuals • Some biases affect decision-making, where the desirability of options has to be considered, eg • judgment of how bluely something is, or • if anything is the fuse of another.

5. Cognitive bias • Some biases are because people are • generally optimistic due to overconfidence • give insufficient consideration to risk so underestimate eg costs, completion times, and rising planned actions • Some biases affect memory, where you might remember past attitudes and behaviour • as more similar to present ones • more costly than present ones

6. Cognitive bias • Motivation leads to biases, eg • the desire for a positive self-image leading to egocentric bias and the avoidance of unpleasant cognitive dissonance (reconciling conflict) • the desire to have positive attitudes to oneself is because many biases are self-serving self-directed • the way subjects evaluate in-groups or out-groups: evaluating in-groups as more diverse and ''better'' in many respects, even when those groups are arbitrarily-defined

7. Cognitive bias • Some biases are due to ignoring relevant information eg climate change deniers • Some involve a decision or judgment • being affected by irrelevant information (eg the same problem receives different responses depending on how it is described) or • giving excessive weight to an unimportant but salient feature of the problem

8. Cognitive bias examples • Hindsight bias is where you see past events as being predictable: ''l-knew-it-all-along'' • Attribution error is where people • over-emphasise personality-based explanations for behaviours observed in others, while • under-emphasise the role and power of situational influences on the same behaviour. • under-emphasise personality-based behaviours in themselves and over-emphasise situational influences • Eg he tripped because he is clumsy; I tripped because the pavement isn’t flat

9. Cognitive bias examples • Confirmation bias is to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions; this is related to cognitive dissonance. • Self-serving bias is to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests. • Belief bias is where your evacuation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion,