Biases

 It is much easier to see how a piece of data supports a position than it is to see how it might count against the position. Said Charles Darwin (1876). The bias noted by Darwin is a confirmation bias that has been studied extensively. People tend to search for evidence to confirm their favored hypotheses and avoid or ignore potentially dis-confirming evidence; in other words, we are biased toward things positively or in the other way around, and these happen due to many external and internal factors. Availability and Anchoring biases or of the most critical types of biases that have a powerful effect on our daily life decisions.

The availability bias is the human penchant for thinking that examples of things which come to mind are more representative than is the case. The psychological phenomenon is just one of several cognitive biases that hobble the critical thinking and, so the validity of our decisions, that is to say, the availability heuristics is the way we assess the probability of an event to occur by the intensity to which pattern is readily available, due to list of cases that induce this kind of bias.

To begin with, the ease to recall or what is called vividness, this case is formed by the presence of vivid events, which are events that appear to be more probable, and more likely to happen, thus memorable, for example, it is more likely for someone to go and turn off electricity in his house, when it is lightening, or saying 20% of people are affected by a specific disease, is less vivid than saying 20 out of 100 are affected. Furthermore, sometimes things look too good to lose like if you got a job opportunity that appears to be good, you directly go into it without considering risks. Moreover, vivid events may convince more than statistics or realities.

Recently, a type of events that are easier to recall, this term is coming from the word recent, meaning events that have recently happened, for example, it is more likely for someone to purchase a particular product that appears very frequently on the TV, and that is why advertisers spend millions to ensure their messages will be remembered. Additionally, Retrievability is also an example; it indicates that we are biased in assessments of frequency in part because of our memory structure limitations and our search mechanisms, for instance, if someone is asked if it is more likely to find eight-letter words ending with “-ion “ more than finding  “n”  as the seventh letter. Besides, things that catch our attention more may also lead to availability bias; this type is called the Salience Effect, The Salience Effect explores the why, when and how of which elements are “salient” for different individuals - meaning which items we are most drawn to and will focus our attention on. This is a crucial aspect in recognizing what caused us to differentiate particular elements from others and what information we are more likely to focus our cognitive efforts on, for example, an abrupt noise in a quiet environment or something that is lit up at night time. Finally, the incorrect association, or the presumed association, which is linking things incorrectly, firms’ structure group experts, e.g., in MIS but specific software application may be expert elsewhere.

Availability biases can be avoided when it is not needed, by not taking decisions that are based on the available or recent events but go into more accurate statistics, and facts; furthermore different people have different way of thinking, so exchanging information with different people may engage you with varying types of experience, and so you will have better perspective, thus overcoming availability bias. However, sometimes you have to get benefit from the presence of availability biases, since it is an excellent way to make people believe in something, such as a product that you are advertising to.

Anchoring bias is another type of bias; once you buy a product you become anchored to its price, for example, in the US, the famous coffee brand Dunkin Doughnuts was selling the coffee for 40 cents when Starbucks came, they wanted to sell the coffee with 4 $, so they tended to let people purchase the coffee once for 4$, so people got anchored to this price. Now Starbucks is one of the most popular coffee shops. Sometimes, people may be anchored to places, to another people, or maybe to numbers; and this relates to various types under anchoring bias, for example, we have the Placebo effect, which is the thing that has potent impact on the behavior of people, Mayo study is an example of something that has placebo effect, where a company manager decided to increase the light in the factory, this led to rising in the work efficiency of the employees. Moreover, being anchored to a certain expectation is considered a type of anchoring bias; for example, a juice looks fresher in a glass bottle. Halo effects and sequence have an important impact on our decisions, especially when hiring someone; in other words, the initial traits usually have more impact.

Anchoring biases can be avoided, by planning, thinking and following the best-case scenario and not being anchored to anything else; and when purchasing any product, always compare prices and do not stuck on any old price; by applying the same logic on all other situations where we are anchored to something, whether in company-wise or individual wise. Additionally, you can turn to anchor biases to be for your sake; an example is trying to anchor people when being in a negotiation, to your number.

In summary, Availability and anchoring biases have a significant effect on our daily-life decisions. However, precautions can be taken to avoid choosing a wrong road or to be inclined to imprudent decisions, not only this, but also they can be used for corporate or societal advantage.