hey there everybody and welcome back to this presentation on anchoring biases this
is another part of our cognitive biases series i'm your host dr donnelly snipes
in general the anchoring bias is the tendency
to rely too heavily on one aspect of a situation or piece of information when making decisions
usually this is the first piece of information acquired on the particular subject
there are several different anchoring biases the first one we'll talk about is the common
source or common method bias this means using research or information from only one source
or sources that are very similar or use the same methods examples news my mother used to work for
the associated press as well as gannett news service others out there include reuters these are
organizations that compile news stories and then they send them out they disseminate them
to newspapers and television stations all over the country so you may be thinking that you're getting
independent news when you look at abc news in kansas versus cbs news in atlanta but they may be
getting all of their news stories or the majority of their news stories from a central aggregating
organization for example if you call it that
so it's important to recognize that you may be getting fed the same information
from different news outlets they may be getting their information from the same place
you may be using information that has gotten from the same perspective for example the us
only so people who only get their information from researchers in the us or from news sources
in the u.s maybe missing big perspectives when i look at treatment protocols and how to address
particular mental health issues yes of course i look at what the u.s national institute of mental
health for example says on it but i also look at other countries and how do they what are their
best practices for treating this particular issue because i want multiple perspectives to inform my
decision your own friends and colleagues well we tend to be in sort of a mental vacuum sometimes
when we are communicating with our own friends and colleagues because they share they often share
similar perceptions to us and they get their information from similar places as we do
so they may be contributing to that anchoring bias because we're not getting contradictory or
or differently informed input so what are the solutions seek multiple sources even contradictory
ones if you are in a relationship for example and um you think it is just the greatest
relationship ever and your friends are like hey yeah that's the greatest relationship ever
well that's that's great but what does your pastor say what does your therapist say for example
maybe they have a different perspective on what's going on
and this applies more toward to um things like news and
current events then it may may apply to relationships and look for the confounding
variable this is what i do when i read research studies all the time because
it's impossible especially when dealing with humans to account for every possible um
variable that could be contributing to a particular um situation or scenario that could be
potentially causing depression or cancer or particular viruses or making
people susceptible so it's important to look and say hmm i wonder what else could be causing this
or what else could be contributing to this besides what is being spelled out for me right here
conservatism or insufficient revision is another bias that we often encounter examples could be
expecting people in current relationships to behave like people in old relationships
or despite having several successes still seeing oneself as a failure what we've got here is a
refusal if you will to let go of old premises old beliefs even in the face of contradictory
information if we're in a relationship with somebody who is just you know the cat's meow and
treats us really well and it's a very healthy relationship
if we still have a part of us that is looking for scanning and expecting them to behave like
other people did in other relationships that may be uh the conservatism or insufficient revision
bias because we've we're still part of us is still expecting them to fulfill that um
that old belief even though we have all this information to the contrary
there's a quote from a movie series that i like called jesse stone and
the movie comes or the quote comes from the movie jesse stone lost in paradise
if you don't like the answers you're getting check the premises if you keep getting answers that just
don't seem to fit step back and examine whether you're considering all of the factors examine
whether you're using outdated information to make current decisions remember to examine situations
based on the facts in the present context and the current validity of prior beliefs
just because we get new information doesn't necessarily mean our old beliefs don't have
some validity to them but we need to evaluate how valid are they now you know beliefs that
i held when i was eight years old are pretty for the most part invalid now that i am 50 years old
another bias is called functional or role fixation
and this is when we see things as needing to be used only how they're supposed to be used
or seeing people being in roles and only doing certain very well well-defined things in their
roles and this really keeps us stuck in a box where we're not able to think creatively
or adapt efficiently examples and i love uh working on this cognitive bias
in in some of my classes because it's a fun activity i give people duct tape paper clips
mosquito netting um and i asked them what could you do with this and i encouraged them to get past
what the thing was originally made for for example taping ducts or clipping papers together
what else could you use it for get outside the box be creative the same is true for
roles you know we often think of people as being in particular roles and it's very um narrow in
what we expect them to do or how we expect them to act the solution to this is what i've termed the
macgyver principle or creative problem solving for example back oh gosh 10 years ago maybe
the car was something that got you from point a to point b and that's all it was and then comes uber
and people started figuring out that hey my car can also be something that i can use to make money
so that gets out of that roll fixation seeing the car is just
a way to transport me from point a to point b art therapy using clay pots to process emotions there
are a lot of art therapy activities that you can do with clay pots not just planting plants in them
balloons or bubbles are only for parties um but that's not true balloons are great
things that you can use that typically aren't going to break lamps and stuff
if if it's a rainy day outside and the kids have a lot of energy or the dogs have a lot of energy
uh blowing up balloons and tossing them around can be a way to get out energy it's not just something
to look at to use for a decoration bubbles blowing bubbles is something that we do at parties as well
but it can also be a great activity especially for kids but for adults too to encourage
slower breathing and trigger that rest and digest um response to tame the hpa axis blowing bubbles
requires us to breathe in a big breath we hold it for a second we get the bubble stuff in place
and then we exhale slowly and that actually calms our stress response down
and computers or ipads typically we think of them as a way to process information write papers send
emails do things like that but during the pandemic we also started seeing them as ways to visit
other people yes we're not visiting in person but sometimes we couldn't
so through an ipad or through a computer we were able to virtually visit people and still get that
face-to-face sort of engagement um even though we weren't able to be there in an actual person
and the law of instrument reliance on only tools or methods currently known and this
also leads us to stuckness or inability to get outside of the box for example math
a lot of times when you do math you're taught there's only one right way to do this
and i can tell you after homeschooling my kids um there are multiple different ways to
go about solving equations and still get the right answer so relying only on one particular method to
to solve a problem may prevent you from seeing other ways to solve the particular problem
anger management and addiction are two other examples reliance on only what you know for
addiction if you know 12 steps is the way to go well what if 12 steps doesn't work
then what do you do for anger management cognitive behavioral therapy what if cognitive behavioral
therapy doesn't seem to work for this person do you just keep applying it and thinking hey if
i apply it enough maybe it'll work no that is a fallacy um and and i'm not sure exactly who said
it there's a lot of argument about who was the first to say that the definition of insanity is
repeating the same thing and expecting different results so the law of instrument encourages us to
step back if we try doing something with a method that is known and it doesn't
work then look for other methods emotional regulation and interpersonal communication
are two other examples if we only use the skills and tools that we currently have
we may not be effective at regulating our emotions or communicating with other people
so we need to break this law of instrument and be willing to explore
new strategies be willing to consider that there might be other instruments out there
other tools that actually work better and be willing to to search for them ask for them
the anchoring biases is the tendency to rely too heavily on one aspect of a situation or piece
of information when making decisions usually this aspect is the first thing we noticed or this piece
of information is the first piece of information we got and we just take it to be the whole thing
when in reality it may only be a part of what's actually happening or only one way
to solve a particular problem this causes us to fail to notice improvements in behavior
if we rely on only the first thing that we saw then we don't see improvements as they happen
it may cause us to fail to notice differences among people if we base our assumptions on
how one person acts and assume that everybody's going to act that way
or rely on faulty or incomplete data all of these can contribute to increased feelings of depression
helplessness and hopelessness anger and anxiety use those strategies to combat the anchoring by
bias step back get creative get outside of the box ask yourself regularly even if you think you
know everything about a particular topic step back and ask yourself what am i missing what else could
there be what are some other perspectives in order to make sure that you're seeing the whole picture