The Biased Thinking - III

Question is does our brain have such capabilities to perform such analytics then answer is no but we have one thing that these machines don’t have and that is mind. As I said earlier mind is very powerful. Mind has its own working style. Mind can carry out 1000 times more than such analytics but only drawback with mind is that it is biased. If we can keep it away from biasness then it’s very easy to predict such judgments(Sherlock Holmes had amazing control on his mind). It was the biased mind that was gripped by magic of Messy but completely overlooked Thomas Muller who was more consistent than Messy.

In India, 1950 to 2014, out of 64 years more than 50 years were ruled by Indian Congress Party. Opposition parties accused many time that most of the news media in India is either pro congress or pro left parties. Congress ruled the India from 2004 to 2014 and that time lot of privileges was given to media person. 2014 elections were very influential in term of media coverage. Opposition NDA alliance was giving tough fight to ruling Congress led alliance in the leadership of Narendra Modi. Narendra Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state and many time accused Indian Media for their biasness. He hit very hard on Indian media many times for wrongly defaming him. He was very critical to most of the influential journalists of that time though he never accused them openly that they are pro congress pro left but it was general in public that these journalists are pro congress pro left. So when an anchor asked the question to those journalists at 7:55 AM, 16 May 2014 “who is going to win today?” what was going in their mind? 

Few of the scientific exit polls had predicted the victory of Modi in elections and logically their judgement must have been Modi also but at the same time their mind hijacked their brain. They had associated feeling of prejudice against Modi so they could not want to see him win. Question was asked to them “who was winning that day” but they didn’t answer that question. Their mind changed the question from "who was winning" to "who should have won" and they all predicted hung assembly and later their all judgements went wrong. Same thing was repeated in 2017 UP election also and same journos made same mistake. Same thing happened in US elections also. Most of the influential media persons belong to liberal ideology while Donald Trump has a strict anti-liberal image. So they didn’t want to see winning Trump so their mind convinced them that Hilary Clinton was wining. Fortune wrote on November 9, 2016 -

“How is this possible when every poll and prediction site said that Hillary Clinton would win? How could everyone have gotten it so wrong?

The inescapable fact is that most of the mainstream media got it wrong because they simply couldn't believe that Americans would elect someone like Donald Trump. Denial can be a powerful drug.

In part, that's because much of the East Coast-based media establishment is arguably out of touch with the largely rural population that voted for Trump, the disenfranchised voters who looked past his cheesy exterior and his penchant for half-truths and heard a message of hope, however twisted.”

Editor of Cracked put it in an article: "If you don't live in one of these small towns, you can't understand the hopelessness. The vast majority of possible careers involves moving to the city, and around every city is now a hundred-foot wall called 'Cost of Living.'"

The simple process to predict the election result is to take the relevant sample and then analysis the sample. But media person were so much confident on their brain that they could never realized that when they were fooled by their mind. One of the important property of mind is that it is always ready to jump to the conclusion. They focused on the weaknesses of Donald Trump and jumped to the conclusion that this man can never become the president of USA and completely ignored the outlook of voters who was actually responsible for selecting their president.

Mind hinders our rational thinking since it’s designed in such a way that its always eager to jump to the conclusion. How many times you made judgement about someone by their looks, cloths, personality? How many times you have made mistake by considering a good looking leader as a good human being also? How many times you presumed that a lady who is good looking must also be honest? How many time you just judged the speech of a speeker by his speech ? We have tendency to generalize the whole picture just on the basis of one fact and completly igore other essential facts and make judgement.s Since those judgments are biased judgement so these are supposed to be wrong. In psychology this phenomena is called “Halo effect” where you just consider one aspect and makes whole picture. It was named by psychologist Edward Thordnike in reference to a person being perceived as having Halo. 

Edward Lee Thorndike (August 31, 1874 – August 9, 1949) was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. Edward Thorndike originally coined the term referring only to people; however, its use has been greatly expanded especially in the area of brand marketing. Every day lot of advertisement messages bombarded our mind to influence us and to make the judgement in favor of them. Normally when we have enough time and enough information available then we can use our brain and try to stop mind in judgement making but what to do when we don’t have enough time and we are in completely blind situation. At that time we have to make decision by using only our fast mind. Mind is fantastic tool to make judgement if it is not biased that means if there is no pain or pleasure attached with the mind and its repetitive action (that means you are expert of that field). But it’s very difficult then we don’t have any biases in our mind. Either we have pain or pleasure associated with something in our mind or if we are not expert of that field. So how do we make decision when we are not expert of that field and we are neutral. Simply mind makes the decision on the first impression it receive (The first thought that comes in mind at that time). 

Who is the most talented actress? Probably you will answer the name of actress which comes first in your mind. After few second you will realize that there are more talented  actress than her, after few minutes you would realize there are more talented than her so when you have to make decision in limited time and you don’t have any pain or pleasure associated with the outcome and you are not expert then you make the decision on the basis of first thought that come in your mind.

What will you do if you received information that some crime event is going on street. You go there and you see a black person Charles Kinsey is sitting on street with a white person. His behavior is suspicious. You took out your revolver and aim on him and you observe that Charles Kinsey is shouting “don’t shoot, I am behavioral therapist and I am unarmed” and suddenly you see person sitting with him is taking something out. It may be pistol or it may be something else. If it is pistol he will shoot you. So you have fraction of second to make the judgement and it is the situation of life and death and same thing happened with that Florida’s Police Officer. He had fraction of second to make the judgement and what all information he had that time is a black man lying on street and shouting that he was behavioral therapist. He could not use his brain to make the decision due to unavailability of time. It was amygdala hijack moment. Being a police officer and since he had passed the police training I can assume that he was neutral that means he didn’t have any pleasure or pain associated with it. Though it was repetitive work for him but time was so less that mind lost its expert decision making abilities so he made the judgement on the basis of first impression that he received from the mind and that was a black person might be criminal (Apartheid still prevails) and he shot Charles Kinsey.

We are prone to make biased judgement. Our mind is designed in such a way and it’s nothing to do with intelligence, knowledge, experience or time. In my next article, I will explain the difference among, intelligence, rationality and wisdom and how to make unbiased judgement.