As a human being, I’m proud to say I have biases. Having biases is what separates me from the machines I live with. Although it is debatable, I tend to believe that biases serve a useful purpose – to some degree. Knowing I have biases helps me communicate, make choices, respond, and live with far less stress.

To believe you are unbiased is to say you are inhuman or a machine. Admitting your biases helps you take charge of them. And in taking charge of your biases you can take charge of your life. Further, in understanding your biases and how they work you become a more useful and stress-free member of your society.

In this article, I have copied liberally from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. As you read the list of cognitive biases along with their variants, I hope you, too, will find some value. Maybe you’ll notice some biases you didn’t know you had. You can’t truly gauge any of the biases you might be operating under since it’s not possible to accurately observe a system of which you’re a part. Still, you may be able to note biases you see in others and by association assign them to yourself – and maybe notice how you might operate the same bias you see in another.

Remember: knowing you have biases helps you take charge of them. Understanding how your biases work helps you understand yourself and others better. This understanding can serve you and your community in a number of ways.

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If I’m only 7 years old, why do I look so OLD?

Aging might be desirable after all.

Joan came to me complaining that she’d tried everything she could find to slow the aging process. She felt that she was getting “old.” By old, she meant that her body looked wrinkled and withered – no longer fresh and alive as it did when she was in her twenties. Now she was in her sixties and wanted to look 10-20 years younger.

She had tried wrinkle creams of all sorts and varieties – spending small fortunes in the process and making herself a standard figure in the local health food stores. Joan’s body was healthy and vibrant – she exercised regularly and ate sensibly. For the most part, she had a pretty good outlook about life although three marriages had dented her psyche a little. Now a single woman, she felt concerned about her looks.

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Cause and effect thinking tends to tunnel our thought processes.

Cause and effect thinking tends to tunnel our thought processes over time. That is, we believe one thing happens because of another – then we tunnel that cause-effect relationship into an “only” relationship. One thing happens only because of another.

Reality Tunnels have the form or structure of:

X causes Y

Therefore – (Reality Tunneling)

Y must be caused (only) by X

What if Y is caused by Z? Or X+Z or X-Z? Or something else entirely? According to many quantum physicists, causes and effects are so entwined together it’s impossible to separate one from the other. Basically, there is never one cause for one effect or one effect for one cause. Perhaps reality is a big mess when it comes to cause and effect. To imagine that there is only one cause for any given effect tends to deny reality.

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How quickly and accurately we recognize a pattern could mean the difference between death and survival 20,000 years ago.

Patterns – it’s the stuff of life. We don’t perceive reality – we literally create it with our assumptions – based on our perception of patterns. We assume a pattern as soon as we “guess” that one exists. After that, we tend to “fill in the blanks” rather than test our hypothesis (our “guess”).

To illustrate my point, consider the following pattern:

1, 2, 3…

Can you predict the next number? Of course you can. You assume it is 4. That’s because you perceive a familiar pattern. But, what if it is not 4. What if it is 5 instead? Is the pattern broken? Maybe – unless you can perceive a new pattern, you will not be able to predict the next or the next number.

Prediction is how we survived on the plains 200,000 years ago when we were considered food by many of the then existing fauna. Correct predictions brought about survival. Incorrect predictions often brought about death. Over the course of millions of years of evolution, prediction has become so ingrained in humans as to make it invisible to us.

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The Three Amigos – left hemisphere, right hemisphere, senses – give us our sense of “reality”.

Your brain’s cortex is divided into two hemispheres – right and left. According to Orrin Devinsky, MD, professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery and Director of the NYU Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone Medical Center, the right hemisphere of the brain dominates self recognition, emotional familiarity and ego boundaries. The job of the left hemisphere is to make sense out of sensual input and information from the right hemisphere – it is the story teller.

There is a complicated interaction between right hemisphere, left hemisphere, your senses, and the animal brain within you. Theories abound as to just how that interaction occurs. Recently, Dr. Devinsky conducted a review of many studies of hemispheric interaction in an attempt to better understand this interaction – focusing on right hemisphere lesions and left hemisphere delusions.

“…delusions result from the loss of these [right hemisphere] functions as well as the over activation of the left hemisphere and its language structures, that ‘create a story’, a story which cannot be edited and modified to account for reality. Delusions result from right hemisphere lesions, but it is the left hemisphere that is deluded.” Lesions in the right hemisphere can cause delusions as the left hemisphere goes to work making sense of distorted identity and emotional information it gets from the injured right hemisphere.

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