Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Biased Mind
So we discussed in class on Monday that we all have certain psychological biases when evaluating a given situation. The bias depends on what the question was asking and we've discovered the initial bias that lie within heuristics. The top three heuristics discussed are as follows: availability heuristic, representative heuristic, and the anchoring/adjustment heuristic. All three of the heuristics operate in the background when we are making decisions about a certain situation. Lets take a look at the availability heuristic first. An example would be that an person may think that more deaths result from shark attacks than lightning strikes. It is false, more deaths occur annually from lightning. This type of bias is exasperated by the media, internet and other public sources that typically report more sensational stories or skew facts. Relating this to my book I'm reading now, I can say that it explains to that questioning conventional wisdom is something that should always be taken into account for. When one questions even the experts we tend to get to the truth of a particular matter no matter what subject it may be. Freakonomics does not directly relate what their saying about conventional wisdom directly to the availability bias, but I believe that it is implying at the relationship between the two subjects. In the end the availability heuristic is influenced from outside sources such as media, and this may be something that is only cured through education and questioning of the so called facts.
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I feel that a lot of individuals are bias because of their past experiences or events that have occured to them. Like in class the one girl stated that she knew someone that died of stomach cancer, therefore she chose that answer for problem 3 instead of motor vehicle accidents. As to your shark example, I think that people choose the answer that seems the most realistic to them.
ReplyDeleteGreat explanation about what we learned in class on Monday and applying it with your book. I think the reason why people think sharks kill more people is because the news reports more on shark attacks that on lighting strikes. This just makes people think that shark attacks happen more because they are cover more in the news. Lighting strikes are more frequent that shark attacks.
ReplyDeleteThis was a good example of one of the heuristics. It is important to not be swayed by what you initially think is correct. I would agree that the media is responsible for us believing that some things occur more frequently than others.
ReplyDeleteMedia most definitely has a very strong affect on our personal biases. What we see and hear about everyday changes our perspectives without us even realizing it. I like your shark attack example because if that would have been on our quiz, I would have chosen shark attack, falling into the availability heuristic once again.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with the claim about the media. The media executives' ultimate goal is to increase their ratings, and repeatedly showcasing stories such as shark attacks, they keep their viewers interested because who doesn’t like to hear about a shark attacks. As a result, they enforce the availability heuristic, which ultimately negatively affects the lives of viewers because it hinders their ability to rationally reason when making decisions.
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