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How Actor-Observer Biases Affect the Way We Interact With People
Why the actor-observer bias happens
A possible reason is that when people are the actors in the situation, they are blind to their own actions.
When they are observers, they can easily spot the behaviors of other people.
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Key Ideas
The Just-World Hypothesis
Is a cognitive bias that causes us to assume that people’s actions always lead to fair consequences, meaning that those who do good are eventually rewarded, while those who do evil are eventually punished. Shortly, is the belief that everyone gets what they deserve.
Why poeple believe is a just world
- Belief in a just world can serve as motivation for making long-term efforts.
- Belief in a just world can serve as a coping mechanism for everyday struggles.
- Belief in a just world can help people cope with existential issues, by providing them with a sense of purpose.
- Belief in a just world can help people feel in control, because they believe their future will be determined by their actions.
Factors influencing the Just World bias
- Various background factors, such as religion and ethnicity, can affect the likelihood that people will display just-world beliefs, and the degree to which they will display them.
- Various situational factors can also affect the degree to which people believe in a just world. For example, being in a good mood reduces people’s tendency to blame innocent victims, while being in a bad mood increases this tendency.
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Key Ideas
Know and conquer your enemy
Our brain relies on cognitive biases over clear evidence. Cognitive bias is the tendency to make poor judgments in a consistent pattern. Our unconscious biases are often so strong that they lead us to act in ways that are inconsistent with reason, our values, and beliefs.
Paying careful attention is the best way to beat these biases. It can only be done if you know the different types of cognitive biases that can influence your thinking.
Common cognitive biases
- The Dunning-Kruger Effect: You believe that you're smarter or more skilled than you are, which prevents you from admitting your limitations and weaknesses.
- Confirmation Bias: When you welcome information that you agree with while disregarding evidence that doesn't suit you — even if it's accurate.
- Self-Serving Bias: When you blame external forces when things are bad, but credit yourself when it's good.
- Optimism Bias: You believe you are more successful than others and won't experience any misfortune.
- Availability Heuristic: You believe that whatever comes to your mind quickly is the right decision.
- Attentional Bias: You only focus on some points while ignoring other aspects.
- False Consensus Effect: When you overestimate how much others will agree with you.
- Misinformation Effect: Your memory has been interfered with, changing how you recall past events.
Master self-care and self-awareness
Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.
This acronym can be used by anyone to help you master self-care and self-awareness. It encourages you to pause and ask how you're feeling. Feeling hungry, angry, lonely, or tired makes you more vulnerable to self-destructive behaviors.
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Key Ideas
The Way We Delude Ourselves
Cognitive Biases are a collection of faulty and illogical ways of thinking which are hardwired in the brain, most of which we aren’t aware of.
The idea of cognitive biases was invented in the 1970s by two social scientists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, with Kahneman winning the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for the same.
Hyperbolic Discounting
It's a tendency to heavily weigh the moment which is closer to the present, as compared to something in the near or distant future.
Example: If you are offered a choice of $150 right now or $180 after 30 days, you would be more inclined to choose the money you are offered right now. However, if we take the present moment out of the equation, and put this offer in the distant future, where you are offered $150 in 12 months or $180 in 13 months, your choice is likely to be the latter one.
Common Biases
- Actor-Observer Bias: the way the explanation of other people’s behaviour tends to focus on the influence of their personality while being less focused on the situation while being just the opposite while explaining one’s own behaviour.
- Zeigarnik Effect: when something unfinished and incomplete tends to linger in the mind and memory.
- The IKEA Effect: when our own assembling of an object is placed at a higher value than the other objects.
- Optimism Bias: makes us underestimate the cost and duration for every project we try to undertake or plan.
- Availability Bias: makes us believe whatever is more easily available to our consciousness, and is more vivid (or entrenched) in our memory.