Overcoming Confirmation Bias in Organizational Decision-Making
"Only tell me what I want to hear, because I'll ignore everything else." – Everyone, at some point
In the first quarter of the 21st Century, perhaps nothing was less pleasant than a political conversation with a member of the other party. Sadly, virtually every one of these conversations was doomed before it began. The reason? Confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias describes the tendency to reject information that challenges previously held beliefs. That is why political conversations tend to go nowhere. Each side rejects the information on which the other side's conclusions are drawn. It's like trying to convince someone that something red is blue – a non-resolvable argument.
Confirmation bias is dangerous as it causes us to ignore or reject valid information that would serve us if we paid attention. But we don't, in the interest of defending our past positions. Were we perfectly rational, our past positions would become irrelevant the moment that valid, new information demonstrated a change was warranted. Instead, we tend to guard doggedly against the very things we need as individuals to learn, grow and adapt.
And for organizations, confirmation bias is infinitely more complex. Agility in business is perpetually top of mind, extolling the virtues of rapid adaptation to ever changing circumstances. Confirmation bias is the opposite of agility. It is holding onto old plans in a new world because we don't want to admit we were mistaken. And it happens all the time.
There are ways of breaking through, both for individuals and groups, but they require discipline, intention, patience and time, four things most of us lack in a world that changes faster every day. Ultimately, however, not taking the time to evaluate important decisions in light of known human biases proves far more costly.
If confirmation bias is such a pervasive and powerful problem, it begs the question: why do we do it? To understand, we must first understand biases, heuristics and behavioral science.
The Brain's Limitations
The human brain has enough mental energy to process only a tiny fraction of the information available to it. Were people to try to think through every decision, they would become mentally depleted, and effectively paralyzed, by breakfast.
To compensate, human beings have adopted what Daniel Kahneman calls The Dual Systems Theory. Kahneman suggests that people engage in two very different types of thinking: System 1, which is fast, easy and unconscious, and System 2, which is slow, difficult and effortful.
System 1 is like being in autopilot in sunny skies, while System 2 is like landing the plane in a storm.
By necessity, we spend the overwhelming of our time engaging in System 1 thinking (estimates typically reach 90% and above), reserving System 2 thinking for the relatively rare moments in the day in which we really need it.
If people are spending 90% of their time in unconscious autopilot, it begs another question: who's flying the plane? The answer to that is, "Biases and heuristics," the foundations of behavioral science.
Biases and Heuristics
Biases are mental tendencies, and heuristics are mental shortcuts that help us make decisions without expending mental energy. They fly the plane while we are in autopilot.
Fittingly, people have a bias against the word "bias," because they conflate it with racism, sexism, ageism, and all of the other isms that are worthy of our scorn.
Biases, however, are neither good nor bad. I have a positive bias for people who wear Canvas Chuck Taylor sneakers. As soon as I see them, I feel as though we have shared values and feel a kinship. It's just a mental tendency that helps me avoid spending any of my precious System 2 thinking.
Of course, bias can lead to all sorts of awful problems, especially when we perceive threats where there are none. But the answer is not to eliminate bias, because that is impossible. We could not survive without relying on biases. The challenge is learning how to recognize and mitigate the biases that our rational minds can understand are dangerous.
Heuristics face no such stigma, but play just as big a role in flying the plane in autopilot. Heuristics are mental shortcuts on which we rely when pressed to make decisions we can't "afford" to think through. The affect heuristic describes how we rely on emotions, or "our gut," to make decisions, rather than an extended thought process. Anchoring describes how we hold onto the first piece of information as our reference point in negotiations, without re-evaluating for accuracy or relevance. And the availability heuristic describes how ease of recall affects our perception of probability, explaining why people are more afraid of flying than driving, despite the data proving the exact opposite. Plane crashes get a lot more attention than car crashes, so people unconsciously believe they happen more often.
So, what is the cognitive purpose of Confirmation Bias? It is to budget mental energy. On the positive side, it ensures we don't spend our entire weekly paycheck on a Saturday night.
Confirmation Bias and Emotions
Understanding biases and heuristics as a means of saving mental energy is extremely helpful, but hardly tells the entire story. Because they serve our emotional needs as well. And each bias has its own unique relationship with our emotions.
"Tolerance for ambiguity" is a leadership attribute more easily extolled than practiced. Uncertainty is universally unappealing to the human condition. It requires decades of self-development to build a tolerance. Understandably, most people seek ways to feel in control, even when we are not.
In that regard, confirmation bias plays a major role. It soothes us against uncertainty, reducing fear and discomfort. Data and information that support our certainty are like a warm, soft blanket. Data and information that challenge our certainty are like an ice bath in the Arctic.
It's not surprising that most of us feel motivated to avoid them at all costs.
But uncertainty is not the only thing that confirmation bias guards against. Often, we feel that our status, and even our careers, are tied to past positions we have taken. Despite countless examples in which acts of accountability are rewarded with enhanced status, many environments discourage it, making people want to avoid it, rightly or wrongly, out of perceived self-interest.
As a result, people hold onto existing beliefs as long as they possibly can, using Confirmation Bias as a shield against any conflicting information that threatens to penetrate their psyches and make their status and position feel threatened.
This tendency to avoid accountability is often exacerbated by Hindsight Bias, in which things appear easy to predict after the fact, making misjudgments seem far more egregious than they actually were. Confirmation Bias has friends, and they are mostly bad influences.
So, what is the emotional purpose of confirmation bias? It is to keep us comfortable. On the positive side, it keeps us from freaking out all the time.
Common Examples and Effects
Confirmation bias is pervasive and powerful. It largely determines the information we seek out, ensuring that our existing positions are confirmed.
→It is an obstacle constant in scientific research, presenting a need to guard against unconscious efforts to skew results.
→It affects everyone in the courtroom, from juries to attorneys to judges, as early impressions become difficult to overcome.
→Confirmation bias is a huge challenge for doctors, who struggle to deviate from their initial diagnoses.
→It affects business decision-makers in the evaluations of their own choices, and it impacts the consumers who buy their products and services.
→It dominates hiring, particularly among senior decision makers.
→And let us not forget the aforementioned politics.
In all cases, Confirmation Bias keeps people locked into first impressions, determining the information they will subsequently accept or reject.
And Confirmation Bias spills into every aspect of our personal lives as well. It affects how we think about and perceive friends and family, colleagues and co-workers, neighbors, neighborhoods and the world around us.
Given its ubiquitousness, trying to calculate the impact of confirmation bias would be like trying to calculate the costs of mistakes in judgment. All of them. Ever. Suffice it to say, the costs of falling prone to confirmation bias can be astronomical.
And yet, like every bias and heuristic, we couldn't survive without it. As such, our goal cannot be to eliminate Confirmation Bias. Rather, our only rational choice is first to understand it, and then to mitigate for it. Both for ourselves, and for the groups with whom we make decisions. Especially at work.
Confirmation Bias and Organizational Decision Making
As with any bias, Confirmation Bias becomes infinitely more complex when combined with group dynamics. Groupthink describes the tendency to prioritize consensus over dissent. When in effect, Confirmation Bias serves whatever the consensus dictates. The group will only accept new information that confirms what they have already decided.
In groups with significant power differentials, whether formal or referent, people are often hesitant to voice dissenting opinions for fear of shoot-the-messenger consequences. As such, the group falls behind the leader, and Confirmation Bias serves whatever the leader dictates.
In groups with an absence of trust, positions taken are often guided by political considerations rather than business ones. In this case, Confirmation Bias serves the opposite of whatever position taken by an internal rival. On the flip side, in conflict avoidant groups, Confirmation Bias serves whatever helps the team avoid confrontation.
When it comes to organizational decision-making, biases tend to be huge accelerants to whatever underlying dynamics already exist.
The Existing "Solutions" for Confirmation Bias
Well-known "solutions" exist to help overcome Confirmation Bias. They all fail because they assume people will want to use them. None account for the practical and psychological barriers, which explains why they are never used.
The most common remedy cited to overcome Confirmation Bias in organizations is to foster a culture that encourages dissent, critical thinking and diverse perspectives, which people can get to as soon as they build a perfect Utopia. That's like saying the solution to fitness is exercise and assuming the problem is solved, for everyone forever.
Yes, there are some (far too few) organizations with great cultures that resemble the description above. But if an organization doesn't already have that, it isn't very likely to get it. And if it does, it's going to take a long. Creating an organizational culture with greater immunity to Confirmation Bias is an aspiration, not a plan.
There is one solution that actually works – using a structured decision-making process. When individuals or groups force themselves to answer the right questions, the process surfaces hidden biases very effectively. The problem? Hardly anyone ever does it.
There are a lot of reasons for this, the most obvious being the sheer volume of decisions we make, the speed at which we make them, and the huge mental energy required to think everything through. Most of the time, structured decision-making simply isn't viable.
Structured decision-making is to be reserved for our most important decisions, individually or organizationally.
For better decision-making, individuals require intention and discipline, while groups require coordination and facilitation. But even that is not enough to overcome Confirmation Bias, because it still fails to address the most powerful obstacle of all: emotional resistance.
The New Solution for Confirmation Bias
If following a structured decision-making process might make someone's past decisions seem foolish, it eliminates their motivation to do it. No one wants to appear stupid, to themselves or especially to a group. If forced into a group structured decision-making exercise, they will be concerned exclusively with impression management, muddying the waters for an honest and objective evaluation.
The point must be made forcefully and effectively upfront: errors in judgment from biases and heuristics are as universal as breathing. Every single human has and will make countless errors in judgment, both consciously and unconsciously. And hindsight is always 20/20. To feel foolish for making errors in judgment is, quite literally, foolish. And it is a huge blocker to growth and improvement.
This mindset is a requirement for an objective evaluation, and facilitators must be skilled in making the point. But even that is not enough.
People's status and positions are tied to past decisions, often dependent on the status quo. As such, they are strongly motivated to avoid or muddy any exercise that might threaten their status and positions. This resistance must be eliminated as well. Fortunately, there's a framing to get us there.
"We're not doing this to question your past decisions or threaten your positions or status. We're doing this to supercharge your agility moving forward, which will protect your positions and status."
Stories of agility success, like Play-Doh, Frisbee and Netflix, and of agility failure, like Kodak and Blockbuster, help to drive the point home.
What makes this the "new" solution to Confirmation Bias is that it addresses the emotional blockers before proceeding to the cognitive exercises. Solutions are meaningless for people not motivated to use them.
The Questions to Conquer Confirmation Bias
To conquer Confirmation Bias, overcoming internal resistance is 95% of the work, because the questions that need to be answered are quite straightforward.
→What is your favored approach?
→What is the opposite, or at least an opposing approach?
→What data or information would support that opposing approach?
→How would you adjust your plan if that data or information proved accurate?
→How many hours have you spent evaluating that data or information?
These questions create a thought-mapping very conducive to surfacing Confirmation Bias. Identifying the data and information of the opposing argument helps to frame a measured analysis. Articulating a plan for the alternative helps to remove the anxiety of having to make a change. And asking for a specific estimate of time spent researching forces people to take an honest measure of their approach.
It's always possible that people or groups are making the absolute correct choices, and this exercise will certainly validate that. But it forces people to view their choice from a more holistic and higher-level perspective, which often provides greater clarity around complex choices.
But one thing is certain. Any group or individual who answers these questions before committing to a decision but after addressing emotional (self-image) and practical (status) concerns, will significantly decrease the chances of falling prone to Confirmation Bias. And that is an unqualified success.
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