Some Human Bias Part 1

Sometimes beauty is in purity and precision. Sports can offer this. The clear distinction between success and failure, or time, or height. Sports based on fitness to the extreme mostly show the fastest or highest. Actually what really happens is the differences between first place and last can be minute. Every difference has impact and small differences can be the difference between first and last. Much care has to be taken to distinguish the real differences in performance. So many variables exist and the result quite often tells you little apart from a comparison of a sum of differences. Team sports can have more obvious variables that contribute to performance and results. The problem comes where a good result can come from a poor performance and a good performance can have a poor result. Analysis is needed but there are many pitfalls. Of course safe play and experimentation is to be encouraged, but some thought is useful too.

I have talked about many attributions that people have that are not what they believe them to be. Talent is a small part of results and success when compared to effort and preparation. Perception for many is the other way round. People believe they have or do not have talent and may act based on the perceptions. ‘Talented’ people do not practice because they think they will win naturally and people who are ‘untalented’ stop participating. Both groups have inadequate information to make a judgement close to reality.

The common attribution aspect (attribution theory) is that people tend to attribute success to themselves and failure to outside factors (Self serving bias). Now both situations are effected by inside and outside. Two perspectives are needed one is what really happened, this is not something humans can get perfect, only improve their understanding and actions. Understanding controllable factors and uncontrollable or factors outside of your control. If you let factors outside of your control effect you too much (especially emotionally) it is a waste as you can do nothing about it. This leads to the second point where you need to find the best approach for you to get what you want. Belief that you can make it is important, but a reality check to choose your goals with care is needed. This is where coaches are most needed having a more objective idea of what is possible and realistic and then helping them achieve their goal. Personal development needs expansion of knowledge of reality of your environment, yourself and others. Acknowledge factors you cannot effect and see if what you can do to mitigate their effects, but the focus must be on positively improving yourself in areas you can effect to improve yourself and performance. Use knowledge not guess work followed with believing you did not just guess. Hard work on appropriate tasks is more effective than talent or guessing.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is another common misjudgement when judging your own abilities and performance you think your better than you are mainly because you do not know. Although it may protect the ego it gets in the way of analysis and real data on performance, stopping reasoned truth finding so knowing how to improve cannot happen. It may also link to the ‘experts’ on the sidelines and pubs. This is the stage where a coach and guidance is needed. Beginners; children and adults attempt skills beyond them where they attempt advanced skills they have seen off the TV without the basic skill levels and tactics and with much lower odds of success. Experts have the opposite problem as they understand better what they cannot do and underestimate what they can do (imposter syndrome). It is really difficult to assess your own ability and those that get a good expert (outside) opinion stand the best chance. Either trusting them or getting a personal education to improve these abilities. Understanding others ability can be distorted but sometimes easier. When you are completely destroyed by a better performer it appears clear, but here there may be other factors causing an unbalanced situation. People with Autism are good at being precise relative to absolutes but ‘relative to others’ becomes a problem. Some experts get stuck in the bubble around higher level performers which is a high standard not understanding the wider picture.

More is better is a regular trap where it worked once so it will work again. Not spotting the changed circumstances. Winning at beginner level is different to intermediate and different again at expert level. Getting lucky can win at lower skill levels but against higher performers needs a lot more than luck. Many find It hard to realise that their methods no longer (or have never) worked and need to change to progress. The Sunk Cost fallacy is where it is hard to give up once you have invested a lot of time, money and effort but then when it is not working need to change. Just trying the same thing over and over again is a sign of madness especially when expecting a different result. Many times success is a big barrier to future success, when false confidence is gained by a good result, where factors such as opponent illness or absence means less people to beat. The vagaries of competition can distort perceptions of performance and abilities.

A big problem for the ego is loss aversion where people give more value to avoiding loss. The fear of this can paralyse action or steer action to a safe position. Nobody wins all the time, loss is a key part of progress when approached well. Loss is where you can really learn where the lesson is often much clearer than the lessons of victory or success. By being too careful we often miss lessons and slow or stop our progress. Taking sufficient risk for some losses and failure. A realistic analysis of non success is needed to make success more likely in the future. This is an approach that needs for some to be a course of education. Others have no problem. Confidence and perceptions of others have big effects and supportive environments are needed. You must play the long term game and play the odds to get long term results. The end result needs to be moved towards and obstacles seen as problems to solve, not the end of the world. The white belt does not want to lose but if they are going to be black belt in few years and much better, a small loss now is nothing. Others are risk takers who gamble but not with good odds they need to learn true odds and the benefits and costs along the way.

The standard issue at all levels is the failure of analysis. We are biased and make mistakes because of it. In some areas of life we have been replaced by machines with only the programmers and operators bias.