Jordi Crespo, Partner Director at Hamilton Global Intelligence shares his reflections on the foundations of biases in decision making and opinion formation.
A topic that I have been passionate about for a long time in the process of Decision Making and Decision Intelligence It is the topic of Cognitive Biases.
In these days of hubbub, agitation, polarization, uncertainty and grandiose messages, I think it is interesting to remember some basic issues of bias in decision-making and opinion generation. Here some examples:
BANDWAGON BIAS:
Our behavior, our belief and our attitude depends on what the people around us do. A drag effect on beliefs because the mass carries us.
CONFIRMATION BIAS:
Seek and favor information that confirms our own beliefs or hypotheses and disregarding any contrary alternative. We only follow those people or opinions that confirm our hypotheses.
FRAMING BIAS:
The same information can lead to different conclusions if it is presented in a different way. A series of mental frames or interpretation frameworks are generated with which they give meaning to our opinions because we receive the type of information that "interests" us.
And for me one of the most relevant and one that I have ever explained is the SPIRAL OF SILENCE by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, a German political scientist. The tendency of the spiral is to silence those who hold or hold positions that are different from the majority, but it stops short when it encounters the “hard core”, those individuals who, although few, reaffirm their positions and opinions and do not cease in the determination that his voice be heard. The perspective of the “hard core” gains followers since the majority opinions, accommodated in numbers, do not find thesis to defend their opinions which, being little contested, have allowed themselves to be carried away by the masses.
January, 2024
