Cognitive biases

Bias obviously isn't a trend. Humans have always had biases (and, yes, we all have them). But trends such as increasing polarization and social media filter bubbles can make it harder to recognize and break free of biases. That's why it's worth dwelling on the subject of bias, and how it affects thought.

No matter how rational and logical we think we are, the truth is we're all under the influence of cognitive biases—biases that influence our beliefs, thoughts, and decisions. Indeed, a good many of us will have experienced cognitive bias in action. Sometimes these can be very obvious, such as gender bias and stereotyping, but other types of bias can be incredibly subtle and hard to spot. For example:

• In cultural bias, we may perceive other cultures as being somehow less “normal” than our own.
• Confirmation bias is the tendency to focus on information that supports something we already believe—to the extent that we dismiss or avoid information that may disprove what we already believe.
• Anchoring bias is the tendency to be overly influenced by the first piece of information we hear.
• In hindsight bias, we perceive events—even random events—to be more predictable after they have happened (often referred to as the “knew it all along” phenomenon). As a result, we may overestimate our ability to predict events in future, and take unwise risks.
• In selection bias, we notice things more because something has happened to make us notice it more. A good example is buying a new car and then suddenly noticing that same make and model everywhere on the roads.
• In the halo effect, an initial impression of someone influences what we think of them overall (for example, thinking an attractive person is smarter or more capable than average). This can have a huge influence in areas like hiring.
• The flip side of the halo effect is the horn effect, where one trait that you perceive as negative can influence your entire opinion of someone.

These are just a few of the biases that can have a powerful impact on our everyday thought and decision-making. There are many more. On top of these cognitive biases, there's often bias in the data we use to make decisions (see Chapter 2), meaning the data may be skewed towards a particular group, or exclude or underrepresent others. All of which means we need to work hard to spot bias in our own thinking, and in the information we're presented with.

Increasing polarization

The world seems to grow smaller every day as the gaps between our different cultures lessen (think of British teens soaking up South Korean pop music, or Americans celebrating Saint Patrick's Day). And yet, at the same time, we seem to be getting more, not less, divided. This is the polarization trend, where people are divided into sharply opposing camps, with little or no ability to identify with the other side. Think of the Brexit versus Remain debate, or the apparent chasm between Democrat and Republican voters in the US.

One 2018 study perfectly demonstrates polarization in action. In it, people were asked to estimate the percentage of Democrats who are Black, atheist or agnostic, and gay, lesbian or bisexual, and the percentage of Republicans who are evangelical, 65 or older, Southern, and earning more than $250K a year—essentially playing on stereotypes for both parties. Democrats believed that 44 percent of Republicans earned more than $250K a year (the true figure is 2 percent), and Republicans believed that 38 percent of Democrats were gay, lesbian, or bisexual (when it's really around 6 percent).¹ In other words, misconceptions ran high when describing the “other” party. And the more political information people consumed, the more they were mistaken about the other side.

How can this happen? Fundamentally, the way we consume information has changed. The internet has made it possible to access whatever information we want and yet the sheer vastness and choice of information has only widened gaps in society, particularly when it comes to politics (although political polarization isn't the only kind of polarization). As Ezra Klein puts it in his book Why We're Polarized, “Greater choices let the devotees learn more and the uninterested learn less.”

Based on this, you might think that the cure for polarization is consuming a wider variety of information, including info from the “other side,” but that doesn't seem to help. One study had Twitter users who identified as either Democrat or Republican follow a bot that shared tweets from authoritative figures and organizations on the other side. The participants were regularly surveyed about their views during the month-long experiment, and these surveys showed that respondents became more polarized, not less, after being exposed to opposing voices.² Republicans expressed substantially more conservative views after the month was up, and Democrats became slightly more liberal.

So what can we do about this? The first step is to recognize that we're all prone to polarization, and not just political polarization. If you've ever clicked on a Buzzfeed headline along the lines of 22 Signs You're a '90s Child or 33 Things Only People with IBS Will Understand, you'll know how alluring it is to feel part of a “tribe.” This is why we need to exercise critical thinking skills in all walks of life. By thinking critically, we can spot the information that attempts to position different groups as “other,” learn to question our assumptions, and apply logic to the information we consume on a daily basis.

Social media filter bubbles

One reason for the increasing polarization in our world is the fact that so many of us get our news from social media—especially younger people. More than half of teens, for example, say they get their news from Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.³

The trouble with social media is that it's designed to keep us coming back for more, and as such these platforms repeatedly serve up information that they know we'll like, based on our existing interests and beliefs. (By the way, I highly recommend you watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix. It shows with astonishing clarity how social media apps are designed to maximize our attention.) So if you like and share anti-vaccination content on Facebook, for example, the platform will show you more and more of the same content. The danger is we can end up thinking the world is exactly as we see it online because we're never presented with information that challenges our beliefs.

This is what's commonly known as a “filter bubble”—a state of information isolation caused by algorithms feeding us content that we agree with, based on our previous behavior. In the filter bubble, news that we dislike or disagree with is automatically filtered out, and this can create an “echo chamber” effect, where our perception of reality can become distorted because we're only ever exposed to views that mirror our own.

Critical thinking helps by encouraging us to step beyond the filter bubble and echo chamber. Someone who thinks critically is able to stop and ask themselves “Am I seeing the world as it really is, or am only seeing a narrow slice that echoes my own beliefs?”

Fake news

There's also the fact that what we're seeing on social media may not even be true! Misinformation spreads like wildfire online, and two-thirds of US adults say they've come across false information on social media. If, like me, you're surprised that figure isn't higher, consider the sobering statistic that 56 percent of Facebook users can't actually recognize fake news that aligns with their beliefs.⁴

Misinformation was particularly rife during the pandemic, prompting the World Health Organization to use the term “infodemic” to describe the rapid spread of misleading or fabricated news.⁵ As an example, according to a 2020 NPR/Ipsos poll, 40 percent of Americans believe COVID-19 was created in a lab in China, even though there is no evidence for this.⁶

While some of the misinformation online isn't necessarily a deliberate attempt to deceive people, we can't ignore the impact of malicious disinformation, designed to sow confusion and chaos. (Note the distinction between misinformation and disinformation. Both present untrue, inaccurate, or misleading information, but the difference lies in the intent. Misinformation refers to false or out-of-context information that's presented as fact, regardless of an intent to deceive people, while disinformation is a type of misinformation that intentionally and maliciously attempts to deceive people. To put it in regular terms, misinformation might be your Aunt Jan sharing an article on Facebook that she believed to be true, but you later find out to be false; while disinformation might be a political party or nation-state deliberately setting out to deceive or mislead people with false, incomplete or out-of-date information.)

To be clear, I'm not just talking about countries like Russia and China intentionally spreading disinformation; during the pandemic, President Trump repeatedly touted unproven medical treatments, contradicted his own government scientists, and even retweeted conspiracy theories by celebrities Diamond and Silk, whose own Twitter account was locked for spreading false information about the pandemic.⁷ Trump ended up being permanently banned from Twitter, but undeterred, he was busy announcing his own social media app TRUTH Social just as I was writing this chapter. What really troubles me is that Trump's plans include a video-on-demand service that will feature entertainment, news, and podcasts.⁸ This planned progression from social media to content creation is likely to make the whole polarization and echo chamber problem even worse, and make it harder for people to understand that other views exist—yet another reason why we need critical thinking skills.

The rise of deepfakes

Deepfakes are where artificial intelligence and deep learning techniques are used to create fake images, video, or audio—often with disturbingly realistic results. If you're not sure you've seen a deepfake, watch the YouTube video “Spot on Al Pacino impression by Bill Hader” and see the comedian's face eerily morph into a young Al Pacino as he mimics the actor's voice. Or check out @deeptomcruise on TikTok, an account devoted entirely to Tom Cruise deepfakes, in which you can watch fake Tom Cruise performing magic tricks or doing banal stuff like washing his hands.

A lot of deepfakes are pornographic (for example, mapping female celebrity faces onto porn stars' bodies), but they can also be used to embarrass public figures and even disrupt elections. Facebook took steps to ban deepfake videos that were aimed at misleading viewers in the run-up to the 2020 US election (basically, the videos were designed to make people think politicians had said words they did not actually say).⁹ Other deepfakes are aimed at scamming people out of money. In one example, the boss of a UK subsidiary of a German energy company authorized the payment of £200,000 into a Hungarian bank account after falling victim to a fake phone call from the German head of the company, featuring what the company's insurers suspect was deepfake audio.¹⁰

Deepfake technology isn't inherently bad. Remember that digital avatar of me that I mentioned in Chapter 1? It's made possible thanks to deepfake technology. And in the future, as we spend more and more time in the metaverse (Chapter 1), the ability to have a super-realistic digital version of ourselves will mean you can hang out with friends online in a more immersive way, and even conduct meetings from the comfort of your sofa, with your digital self dressed in smart clothes, while the real you lounges comfortably in pajamas! But the flip side is that people could hijack our digital selves very convincingly, potentially with devastating results.

For me, the even bigger concern is that deepfakes will further undermine trust in what we see, which could of course be used to certain people's advantage. President Trump, for example, has reportedly suggested that the infamous audio of him boasting about grabbing women by the genitals was not real, despite admitting in 2016 that “I said it, I was wrong and I apologize.”¹¹ In other words, as deepfakes become more of a problem, and become even more convincing, there's a distinct danger that political leaders will be able to claim things that really happened—things that we actually saw or heard—never really happened!

Bottom line, it'll become increasingly difficult to tell the real from the not-real, which means we all need to think more critically about the content we consume.

For individuals

In essence, critical thinking means not taking information at face value. In practice, this means you should:

• Always assess new information. Whether it's an article someone has shared online or data related to your job, always vet the information you're presented with. Good questions to ask here include “Is this information complete?” “What evidence is being presented to support the argument?” and “Whose voice is missing here?”
• Consider where information has come from. Is the source trustworthy? What is their motivation for presenting this information? Are they trying to sell you something or provoke you to take a certain action?
• Gather additional information where needed. Where you identify gaps in the information or data, do your own research to fill those gaps.
• Ask open-ended questions. Critical thinkers are curious people, so channel that inner child and ask lots of “who,” “what,” and “why” questions.
• Find reputable sources of information. Personally, I turn to established news sites, nonprofit organizations (fullfact.org and factcheck.org are good places to start), plus education institutes—and try to avoid anonymous sources or sources with an axe to grind or a product to sell. (Remember, when you Google something, those very top results are ads, where the organization or website has paid to show up first. That doesn't make them an authoritative voice.) Also, be sure to check when the information was published.
• Try not to get your news from social media. And if you do see something on social media, check the accuracy of the story (via reputable sources of information, as above) before you share it.
• Learn to spot fake news. It's not always easy to spot false or misleading content, but a good rule of thumb is to look at the language, emotion, and tone of the piece. Is it using emotionally charged language, for instance? Also, look at the sources of facts, figures, images, and quotes. A legit news story will clearly state its sources.
• Learn to recognize and question bias. Biased information may seek to appeal more to your emotions than to logic, and/or present a limited view of the topic. So ask yourself, “Is there more to this topic than what's being presented here?” And don't forget about your own biases. Think objectively about your likes and dislikes, preferences and beliefs, and how these might affect your thinking.
• Form your own opinions. Remember, critical thinking is about thinking independently. So once you've assessed all the information, form your own conclusions about it.

Working with a mentor can help you practice these skills in your working life—at the very least, it can be helpful to have someone pull you up short when you're responding to information from a place of emotion or assumption. Also, do check out online learning platforms such as Udemy and Coursera for helpful courses on general critical thinking skills, as well as courses on specific subjects like cognitive biases.

For organizations

I'd highly recommend building critical skills training into your soft skills training programs—and ensuring critical thinking is covered in relevant technical training (especially data literacy).