Your Brain's Psychiatry Booth

Your Brain’s Psychiatry Booth 

In the holiday classic "A Charlie Brown Christmas,” Charlie Brown seeks help at Lucy’s “Psychiatric Help 5¢” booth. Lucy asks him some questions: “Are you afraid of responsibility? If you are, then you have hypengyophobia. How about cats? If you're afraid of cats, you have ailurophasia.” Finally, Lucy asks: 

Lucy: Do you think you have pantophobia?

Charlie Brown: What's pantophobia?

Lucy: The fear of everything!

Charlie Brown: THAT’S IT!

Lucy: Five cents, please. 

We sympathize with poor Charlie Brown. Sometimes the world is just too frightening. Phobias can be debilitating but more insidious is bias. Bias is woven into our very being and often we are unaware of it.

Ben Yagoda, in his article “Your Lying Mind,” writes that Wikipedia lists 185 definitions for cognitive (related to thinking, reasoning or remembering) biases which Yagoda defines, as a “collection of faulty ways of thinking that is apparently hardwired into the human brain.” Bias is most often associated with racial, cultural, or political positions. Cognitive biases are less overt but can be just as damaging.

Cognitive biases are varied. Yagoda selects six most damaging biases: Confirmation bias, the tendency to favor people whose opinions match yours; Fundamental attribution error, the tendency to believe that people’s actions reflect who they are; the bias blind spot, believing that while others have biases, you are exempt; the anchoring effect, heavily relying on the first piece of information encountered; the representative heuristic, a shortcut used to make judgements based on personal examples; and projection bias, the belief that your tastes or preferences will remain the same over time.

In politics, these biases are evident. A politician favors news outlets that reflect her views (confirmation bias), labels people who disagree with her as corrupt (fundamental attribution error), favors information which supports her platform (anchoring effect), states that all other politicians are biased (bias blind spot), uses personal examples to support her position (the representative heuristic) and believes that current conditions are static and unchanging (projection bias). 

These biases affect our everyday lives. At school, we sit with friends who share our likes and prejudices, shun those who are different, and believe that our friends like the same things we do. At work, we judge co-workers by their looks,  gender, or academic degrees. We judge others based on first impressions not bothering to find out more. 

Each mind develops short-cuts for making judgments and predictions. Innate biases influence how we make decisions and view other people. Becoming aware of these hidden biases may change how we perceive and interact with the world. 

Before making a judgment, agreeing with an opinion, labeling another, or congratulating yourself, reflect on how your mind’s short-cuts affect what you believe. Do some research. Diagnose your own inner biases. Repair the errors of a biased brain. Save 5 cents. 

(Check out “Your Lying Brain: The Cognitive Biases Tricking Your Mind,” by Ben Yagoda in The Atlantic, Sept. 2018)