Debiasing

Debiasing Techniques

One of the most pervasive qualities of human experience is the capacity to construct a multitude of beliefs, judgments, and decisions. People are certainly skilled and rational enough in their judgments and decisions to get through life perfectly fine in most cases. However, at the same time, they often make predictable and systematic mistakes. As testament to this, an ever-growing number of different biases have been identified and categorized, including biases that affect judgments of self and others, introduce errors into estimates and forecasts, and simply cause us to choose wrongly, exemplified by the heuristics and biases perspective.

When there are problems, people naturally look for solutions. Although debiasing research sometimes appears to be overshadowed by research demonstrating various biases—perhaps it seems more noteworthy to show something is broken rather than how to fix it—both debiasing and biasing are equally important to fully understanding judgment and decision making. Just as the study of biases supplies a roadmap predicting the conditions under which mistakes are likely, the study of debiasing supplies a roadmap describing what may be done about these mistakes. The evidence supporting three general categories of debiasing techniques is extensive and comes from diverse sources. This is illustrated with specific examples.

Motivational Debiasing

Motivationally based techniques focus on changing incentives or accountability for accurate decision making. For example, people have a general propensity to try to simplify the world by categorizing things. An object with a flat platform, straight back, and four legs may be characterized as a chair, despite its many variations. But one particularly negative consequence of this tendency is stereotyping. People may similarly characterize others simply because they think that person shares characteristics belonging to a particular group. Although there is debate about the extent to which stereotyping is automatic, incentives such as considering future interactions with a person can sometimes lead to less reliance on stereotypes and more reliance on personalized information. Punishments, such as considering retribution for acting prejudiced, may also lead [Page 208]people to put greater effort into decisions, resulting in less bias.

Making people feel accountable for judgments is another motivational debiasing technique. For example, people have a general tendency to be overly optimistic, exemplified by research indicating that the majority of people think they are better than average (statistically impossible), think they will complete tasks sooner than they actually do, and think that only good and not bad things will happen to them in the future. However, increasing accountability may help lessen at least some of these biases. For example, if people expect that they will have to explain their reasoning to others, they are more likely to put greater effort into decisions. When preparing to justify decisions to others, people seem better able to anticipate possible flaws in their own reasoning. Thus, going on record, or having to justify one's logic, seems to make people's judgments more realistic. Motivations can be social, monetary, or otherwise.

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