Hey,
I will first provide the TLDR; graphic version of the post. If you find this interesting and want to dig deeper keep scrolling!
Confidence in the viewpoint of our mid is a quantifiable value that enables us to make decisions, to simply put it the faster you can accumulate information form your surrounding and the more accurate your brain perceives the information to be, the more confident you feel towards that particular decision this, in turn, leads you to execute that decision.
Our mind regularly indulges in a processing error known as a cognitive bias to take up less time while trying to make sense of the information at hand or when the information at hand exceeds the brain’s capacity to process information.
(all those exams you walked out extremely confident that you will score very well only to later realize that you sadly did not is due to the indulging in cognitive bias to generate your level of confidence)
Cognitive bias comes with its own share of virtue and vices and has many aspects to it but two aspects of it namely the confirmation bias and neglect of probability in combination are the most deployed aspects of through the course of your day while you make decisions, and it’s not something bad in its nature but does have flaws nonetheless. The consequences of the flaws can be mitigated by understanding what exactly these are and how they work.
Awareness and acceptance lead to advancement
Confirmation Bias:
Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that leads us to confirm that which we already believe in, it cuts reality down in a way that we see only that which is coherent with what we believe to be true.
Confirmation bias is the reason why the phrase “The first impression is the best impression” exists.
One very interesting form of confirmation bias is the halo effect which leads to a constant error in our ability to asses a person.
The halo effect was originally identified in 1907 by the American psychologist Frederick L. Wells (1884–1964). However, it was only officially recognized in 1920 with empirical evidence provided by the psychologist Edward Thorndike , who also named this phenomenon as the halo effect about a person being perceived as having a halo .
The experiment done on the halo effect goes as this asked the commanding officers of a military regiment to rate the various qualities of subordinate soldiers on the parameters of leadership, physical appearance, intelligence, loyalty, and dependability.
The objective of this experiment was to understand how one aspect of a person also influences the other aspects of his/her other traits when we evaluate them.
The commanding officers often found the physically superior subordinates to be more apt for a position of leadership and also to be more intelligent, while the less physically superior ones got scored lower on leadership and dependability. In reality, the evaluation of the Commanding officers did not stand, they became victims of The halo effect.
Neglect of probability:
To put it simply it’s our ability to ignore the variance in data.
The advantage of this cognitive bias is that it allows us to identify rules and regularities of the society, The disadvantage is that it pushes us towards definitive conclusions when we have barely observed a tiny slice of reality.
The best example of the mind deploying neglect of probability is that for a long time after 9/11 many people refused to fly and rather chose to travel longer distances by driving. Their minds perceived air travel to include a high amount of risk and viewed travel by road to be much safer.
When you analyze the probability at hand you get a clearer image that they were not at significantly more risk during air travel after the attack than they were before, and they put themselves at more risk by opting to drive. (air travel is the safest mode of travel)
Their minds chose to neglect the probability.
A milder but a very alarming and prevalent case of Variance blindness is when we chose to text while driving, we all know that it’s very dangerous but “hey, it won’t happen to me, ill be careful”.
The Intersection :
The confirmation bias and variance blindness interact with each other all the time, it allows our minds to base opinions on a small set of coherent information while ignoring the sea of noise which in turn leads to the shift from being smack in the middle of the confidence scale to the higher end of the scale towards the “Over Confident” zone.
What essentially happens in the intersection zone is that sensory information (a huge part of confirmation bias is visual) is mixed with an internal hypothesis (confirmation bias) subjected to ignorance towards probability (variance blindness).
This makes us confident about things that we would not be if we would not have given in to the biases. (Optical illusions work on this principle)
We can not rid ourselves of these biases but understanding and assessing why and how our confidence works, help us, in eliminating any and all flaws that are incorporated into the decision-making system.
Enabling us to make better decisions.
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