The 5 Biggest Biases That Affect Decision-Making

By Chris Weller

https://neuroleadership.com/your-brain-at-work/seeds-model-biases-affect-decision-making/

The 5 Biggest Biases That Affect Decision-Making

Humans make thousands of decisions every day. However, our brains don’t give each decision
equal attention — we take mental shortcuts.

To brain scientists, these shortcuts are known as “biases.” They’re neither good nor bad; they
just are. They help us in certain cases and hinder us in others. For instance, an expedience bias
compels us to make decisions quickly. If we’re in a burning building, that may be valuable. But
it might be disadvantageous if we’re conducting a performance review.

At the NeuroLeadership Institute, we help leaders and teams mitigate the biases that
negatively affect people and business decisions, so that they can be more innovative and
effective. Through our research, we’ve organized more than 150 such biases into five broad
categories. These five biases comprise the SEEDS Model®, the framework that underpins our
solutions geared toward reducing unconscious bias.

We’ve outlined each of the five biases below.

Similarity Bias — We prefer what is like us over what is different

Similarity biases most obviously crop up in people decisions: who to hire, who to promote,
who to assign to projects.

It occurs because humans are highly motivated to see themselves and those who are similar in
a favorable light. We instinctively create “ingroups” and “outgroups” — boundaries between
who we consider close to us and who lives on the margins. We generally have a favorable view
of our ingroup but a skeptical (or negative) view of the outgroup. Hence why managers hire
employees who remind them of themselves.

Overcoming a similarity bias requires actively finding common ground with people who appear
different.

Expedience Bias — We prefer to act quickly rather than take time

Humans have a built-in need for certainty — to know what is going on. A downside of that
need is the tendency to rush to judgment without fully considering all the facts.

Expedience biases crop up when we are reviewing employees and rely solely on one data point
or recommendation. The fix is to take more time to gather a wider array of information.

Experience Bias — We take our perception to be the objective truth

We may be the stars of our own show, but other people see the world slightly differently than
we do. Experience bias occurs when we fail to remember that fact. We assume our view of a
given problem or situation constitutes the whole truth.

To escape the bias, we need to build in systems for others to check our thinking, share their
perspectives, and helps us reframe the situation at hand.

Distance Bias — We prefer what’s closer over what’s farther away

Distance biases have become all too common in today’s globalized world. They emerge in
meetings when folks in the room fail to gather input from their remote colleagues, who may
be dialing in on a conference line.

The bias reflects our instinct to prioritize that which is nearby, whether in physical space, time,
or other domains.

We can mitigate distance biases with systems that acknowledge important figures outside our
immediate proximity, such as by calling on remote colleagues first in a meeting before
discussing with the room.

Safety Bias — We protect against loss more than we seek out gain

Safety bias refers to the all-too-human tendency to avoid loss. Many studies have shown that
we would prefer not to lose money even more than we’d prefer to gain money. In other
words, bad is stronger than good.

Safety biases slow down decision-making and hold back healthy forms of risk-taking. One way
we can mitigate the bias is by getting some distance between us and the decision — such as by
imagining a past self already having made the choice successfully — to weaken the perception
of loss.
What’s important to remember about the SEEDS Model® is that no one can mitigate bias
alone. It takes an entire group using a common language around bias to help individuals make
smarter decisions.

April 9th, 2019