#10 : It's not about Right or Wrong !!!

 

 It's Not About Right or Wrong

Some of you might have seen Sridevi's Movie English-Vinglish, it thought me a fundamental lesson of being non-Judgmental.   A question triggered me; why do people judge? Why do people get biased? And What are these Biases?  And I decided to research on same and hence below the blog.

 Two months ago, our Customer documentation team sent a notification regarding usage of few words, like whitelist & Blacklist, Master & slave. How come we were using these for so long? As my title says it's not about right or wrong, it's all began due to our social infrastructure and Society we live. This is not by chance, it trickled in unconsciously and now its time to be aware and be conscious and correct ourselves.

Why these biases so important?  It is because DAILY we make lots of choices, choose options and make decisions, unconsciously based on these biases. So, if we know them, we can be conscious while taking /making such decisions, opinions as, it's not about right or wrong.

During my research, I found out around 30 + biases; let's discuss a few of them.

1.      Confirmation Bias:  Here, you don't seek objective facts and interpret the beliefs what you believe in, you ignore the information which challenges your assumption. The good example would be COVID related data and our interpretations. We don't get into scientific depths; we keep believing what we believe. We need to be cautious and keep updating ourselves.

2.      Anchoring Bias: Anchoring Bias happens when people set their standards based on the first bit of information, they hear. They try to hook their decisions based on that minimal information. Like a person smartly dressed Vs shabbily dressed, we opine that person dressed will not be good. That's why if you remember people suggest to go smartly dressed for an interview and interviewer might not be aware of this bias and may take some decision based on his opinion.

3.      Stereotyping:  This most us know, and it's typical for gender-based bias, where we stereotype jobs, functions based on gender. We always stereotype the jobs, roles, functions based on gender, caste, colour, etc.

4.      Survivorship Bias: It's also common, and you can relate in work or social life, we always remember and credit people who are in front end or succeed, We forget people who didn't make it or who was behind the scenes, they had contributed as much as a person in the front end, and most of the time without them frontend people couldn't have achieved what they have. In IITs, its 99 percentiles could be failure ??

5.      Recency Bias: A tendency to overvalue most recent information available to us, for this primary example would be when you want to give credits, we offer to people who have recently made some effort, but we forget old contributions !!! Mainly all managers have to be aware of where they appraise their employees not based on recent events but for the whole year.

6.      Availability Heuristic: Out of Sight – Out of Mind, if you can't remember it can't be right, best examples are repetitions of Ads, wherein we get bought into it because we see repeatedly. News items are another example where repeating feels this news item may be correct ??

7.      Bandwagon Effect: Do because your peer, the neighbour has done it, everyone else has done it so it might be right!!!  Crowd mentality follow without investigating ,as what you are following is right or wrong.

8.      The Blind Spot Bias: We all have blind spots, and should be aware of same, like we do in our evaluation, Manager feedback, Mentor guidance. Otherwise, we make decisions, form opinions based on available information.

9.      Choice supportive Bias: We choose something because we like it or feel positive about it. Like it said here if we want Mac, we will keep ignoring windows contributions.

10.  Attention Bias: We pay attention to somethings and simultaneously keep ignoring others based on perception so that the decision could be flawed.

    Awareness is the key. With Awareness, we can have better options /Choices, and with better choices, we get better results. It's not about right or Wrong !!!


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