Are You Biased?

Formation of views about certain issues is necessarily a natural process. It just can not happen with our own intent. The experiences of life time make our views and it may take up to years. In the process the intervals between consecutive events may span large time differences. Physically, the specific information in our memory, in gray cells of our brain, might be stored at quite different places far from each other relatively. Hence, the connection between such memory chunks is usually weak. It depends upon the number of times we visit such chunks. The more we visit; the connection will be more vibrant and alive. It’s just like the web traffic to a web page. The more people visit a website, the more will be the chances of that website to be ranked higher in the search engines. Hence it is necessary for us to revisit pass in our leisure time. We often do that, sometimes intentionally and most of the time unintentionally.

Some times it happens that we are constantly thinking about something but we just can’t concentrate. Many would say that it is because of the external factors which do not let us so. But in fact, the internal factors always outnumber the external ones. The experiences on which our cognitive process carries on are placed sporadically at different points in our brain. Due to the weak links between them; we are unable to concentrate on the different results coming out from each of those experiences. Then the brain would also tend to be diverted to those 'unrelated issues' which have less or no connection with the initial or 'primary issue' but have strong connection with 'secondary issues' we are trying to probe in to. Two results come out of this. One; in the beginning, we would say “I am just unable to focus”, two; if we are affected by those strong but unwanted connections, we would be having biased views about issues.

Consider a simple example to understand it better. John interviews Sam and is reading his resume. John is looking for an MBA for his company and Sam is an MBA. John reads Sam’s experience profile and he feels satisfied as Sam has some five years of experience. John remembers that the company went to loss because of an inexperienced manager earlier. Then, John comes to know that Sam is good in IT networking also but there is a problem too. Sam has done his IT education from IT institute ‘X’. John had hired another IT expert three years earlier, who proved to be a prick for the company and he had obtained his IT education from the same IT institute ‘X’. John refuses to give the job to Sam.

Now, here ‘hiring a manager’ is the primary issue for John. Sam’s ‘experience’ and his ‘IT education’ are the secondary issues which are connected with the earlier experiences of John. The ‘experience’ goes in favor of Sam. But his IT education goes against him. Why? Because John correlated his place of studies with his moral values instead of relating his IT education as an extra expertise for which he has to hire a separate employee. The immorality of the ex-employee of John’s company has strong connection with his experience with John BUT it has minute connection with Sam at all. That’s where John’s verdict becomes biased.

The example is quite simple in its nature, just to understand the basics. We come across very complex situations every day. There can be innumerable unrelated issues connnected to secondary issues which are in turn connected to the primary issue. It all depends upon the capability of a person of how much of information she/he can process in a given period of time. It also depends upon how much of information a person can store in her/his short term memory. The ability to analyze the outcome of experiences and then to hold those outcomes in memory for further comparisons is what is important. It's a multifarious chain linking so many other such chains and making a web. The expertise is to get hold of the lose end of the web and not to get entangled in it.

The problem remains a problem until it is identified. I have tried to uncover those unidentified objects impeding a valid thought process. Was it helpful? Are you biased then? If yes then to what degree? While you muse about these questions, I promise to write the remedies of biased thoughts later some day.