The Role of Biases in Decision Making

What is Bias?

Bias is a personal and often unreasoned judgment for or against one side in a dispute. It can also be described as a tendency, inclination, or prejudice towards or against something or someone. When there is bias in decision making, it means that the decision is based on a subconscious processing of prior knowledge and previous experiences.

Every individual has got biases, for a variety of reasons. However, failing to address them, has negative consequences . When individuals don’t keep their biases in check, and they act on it, it impacts negatively on decision making in organizations.

How do you identify Bias?

1. When a source pretends to present facts, but only offers opinion.
2. When a source presents selected facts to lean towards a certain outcome
3. When a source relies on unsubstantiated or unsupported claims.
4. When a source is heavily opinionated
5. When a source is one-sided

Types of Decision-making Biases

1. Self-serving Bias: This is the tendency to attribute the cause of a thing to that which serves our best interest. A person who engages in self serving bias will make decisions that benefit him/herself over others in the organization. It leads to lack of critical analysis and can affect an individual’s ability to accurately assess a situation.
2. Authority Bias: When we favor the opinion of those in authority over the ideas of others, even when the ideas are better for problem solving, we are engaging in authority bias. Titles does not equate wisdom.
3. Overconfidence Bias: The overconfidence bias may occur, if an individual is too confident in his intelligence, assumptions, and ideas without the knowledge  to prove why his confidence is so high. This can make an individual ignore the other options, procrastinate and take risks with  decisions.
4. Action Bias: The desire to swing into action, when there is ambiguity is a form of action bias. Individuals and teams should be encouraged to analyse situations before acting.
5. False Causality Bias: To assume that sequential events are caused one by the other is the essence of false causality bias. This bias often shows up when practitioners are looking to confirm a causal relationship between what users are saying and what they are doing. This can lead teams to come up with inaccurate problem definitions and inaccurate solutions.
6. Conformity Bias: This is when you decide based on what the majority decides. This can hinder your ability to form a different opinion or have an open discussion about the decision with your colleagues. Conformity bias can strip employees of problem solving skills, if  they all conform to the same way of thinking.
7. Herd Mentality: Also known as bandwagon bias, herd mentality pushes us to favor ideas already adopted by others. This bias plays out the most in voting and politics, when those who vote later are persuaded to also support the candidates perceived as being “winners.” This is an emotional influence that is often devoid of rigorous analysis.

Ways to prevent Bias in decision making.

1. Understanding the effects of biases
2. Know what influences your decision.
3. Question your biases.
4. Reflect on the previous decisions you have made.