If Our Biases are Elusive and Unconscious, How Do We Crack Open These Hidden Brain Codes?

Super Forecasters Disrupt Bias and Re-Write the Code by Adding Some Friction

By Linda E. Pickard Ph.D.

July 13, 2020

“The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

/attributed to Archilochus, Greek Poet

‘Tip-of-your-nose’ perspective

We live our lives as perpetual forecasters. “Tip-of-your-nose” reactions and decisions predominate, as Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner describe in Super Forecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. We need these speedy, intuitive forecasting beliefs and skills to navigate through life’s moment-by-moment and long-term challenges. Otherwise, we risk overloading our brains and our wellbeing. Efficiency via intuition based on our accumulated life experiences allows us to be productive.

Errors in forecasting

When an aspect of our intuition is an outdated ideology in certain situations, causing a descent into hedgehog status, it’s time for an update. Super forecasters know the perils of personal ideology and ‘group think’. Tasked with peering into the present or the future to estimate the probability of something being or becoming a reality, they disrupt their intuitive knowledge by pursuing a ‘dragonfly perspective’.

Perpetual beta

The eyes of dragonflies see in almost every direction at the same time enabling them to capture insects at high speeds. Building on this analogy for improving thinking, super forecasters first note their own view and then test its veracity by seeking out many views. Tapping into the ‘wisdom of the crowd’, they aggregate the views of many who have different bits of information about an issue, reflect on the findings and then update their prior beliefs accordingly as probabilities. By deliberately checking out the accuracy of their viewpoints they add some friction to their existing ‘brain codes’. Re-writes naturally follow, transforming the state of “I don’t’ know what I don’t know” to “Now I know what I didn’t know”. ‘Perpetual beta’ is a way of life in a super forecaster’s brain.

Force Fit Reflection

On a practical level, most of us do not have the luxury in the ‘spur-of-the-moment’ situation of doing extensive research into others’ viewpoints. But we can bring to bear some ‘on the fly’ approaches to checkmate our looming biases.

·        Slow down your thinking

Use assessment tools

Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford University professor of social psychology and author of Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think and Do describes in her June 2020 TED Talk that ‘friction’ helps. They can include checklists and any other tool that helps us to reflect. For example, based on her research, a simple three-item mental checklist for use by police enables them to diagnose a situation quickly to determine the best course of action. The benefits include reducing unwarranted escalation, making incorrect assumptions and stereotyping.

In the same vein, for decades surgeons with their teams have used checklists to avoid errors and put the spot light on hidden blind spots. Highly productive teams, in general, make ample use of assessments tools when formulating and testing out the viability of a possible future scenario, the pathway to it and what might go wrong if enacted.  

Activate the here and now (H&N) response

This strategy builds on Thinking, Fast and Slow described by Daniel Kahneman in his Nobel Prize winning research with partner Amos Tversky about biases. The metaphors of two systems 1 (intuitive, fast thinking) and 2 (deliberate, slower, reflective thinking) illustrate a vital brain partnership (emotional and rational). System 1 scans the future in microseconds. It is a probability sensor drawing on all of our life experiences in search of an appropriate action. In the absence of friction and complete information, System 1 estimates the probability of a match of our current brain codes or algorithms with the challenge confronting us. In milliseconds, we think and act accordingly rewarding System 1 (“I’m right!”).

Under certain circumstances, System 2’s role is to spark a re-think of System 1’s thoughts and actions. But, it needs our conscious invitation to challenge System 1.That invitation means a switch in time (in 1-2 seconds) and space (to the present).

Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long in their book The Molecule of More describe the shift to being present-oriented as H&N (Here and Now). Mindfulness training is one useful tool. It activates being in the moment. For example, in the context of an irritating situation, take three deep breaths or count to three. With time to think, System 2 (H&N) provides a rescue exit from a potentially inappropriate response.

Like a pebble in a pond, the more we use the H&N response (with any mind tool that snaps our attention to the present not the future), the more valuable it becomes. Our robust thinking continues to strengthen in multiple other situations threatening not only our peace of mind but also our sensible mind. In effect we each become a self-styled scientist collecting feedback data on ourselves and correcting as we go. The late K. Anders Ericsson, eminent researcher on expertness, would label the approach as ‘deliberate practice’.

       Practice ‘Active Open Mindedness’ (AOM)

Slow down your ‘refutation mode’

Think about all the disagreements you have had in the last six months or so in a team or otherwise. What percentage of the time do you think you were right? Most of us answer 50% or more all the way up to 100%! That’s a barrier for discovering errors in our brain codes, unleashing hitherto unknown biases.

The antidote - slow down your ‘refutation mode’ as Alan Jacobs describes in How to Think, where listening takes a hit. The emotional/intuitive response of “I do not agree” blocks incoming information that may be enlightening. This telescopic thinking prevents disrupting bias blind spots.

Instead shift into a coach approach, asking open-ended questions. “Be interested rather than interesting” described by Dale Carnegie in his 1936 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. “Tell me more” is a particularly useful approach when someone expresses an opinion that is diametrically opposed to yours. At the least your ‘olive branch’ deepens your understanding of another’s point-of-view, revealing in more detail key ‘friction’ points. The latter may encourage further investigation on your part. Some common ground may emerge or you may stick to your opinion but at least you allowed your brain the space to check its current wiring.

Boost your intellectual humility

It takes effort to re-calibrate our beliefs, especially when we are not aware of them. Super forecasters, scientists, highly experienced intelligence experts and curious, open-minded people, for example, have a head start. By using a dragon fly perspective, among other tools, they detect and correct brain errors that were formerly invisible. Our malleable, learning brains adapt and re-code ready to sense and predict a refreshed set of probabilities.  

Humility offsets an automatic tendency to fall into ‘refutation mode’. None of us can rest on our laurels. Our ‘tip-of-the-nose’ intuitions are confident drivers of our lives. But equating competence with confidence is an illusion. Competence is always in ‘perpetual beta’.

In the spirit of checklists, Daniel Pink in his June 9, 2020 Pinkcast, How to boost your intellectual humility, drew attention to four questions from Warren Berger’s The Book of Beautiful Questions. They can challenge our assumptions (provide friction), guiding us to different perspectives. In reality, how we answer each of the following questions depends on the situation:

1. Do I think like a soldier (defend) or a scout (explore)?
2. Would I rather be right or better understand? (as in Stephen Covey's classic first book - 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, avoiding short-term victory that may undercut long-term knowledge)
3. Do I solicit and seek opposing views? (If you disagree, tell me why)
4. Do I enjoy the present surprise of discovery if I am mistaken? (something new)

·        

How you think interrupts what you think

Know thyself by thinking with others

From ancient times to now “know thyself” is a common refrain with the promise of greater life satisfaction and personal effectiveness. It is a call to self-improvement and learning by poets, philosophers, inventors, novelists, researchers, educators and leaders from all walks of life. It hints at the mystery of the unknown – a deeper sense of our identity that is based on our self-perceptions, how others perceive the world and simultaneously ‘see’ us. We may resist its mystery fearing that unwanted surprises will undermine our confidence.

On the other hand, multiple decades of research on super forecasters by Phil Tetlock and his associates consistently reveal that “know thyself” rewards can be a boost to wellbeing enhancing a sense of control in a universe full of uncertainty. Accuracy improvement in assessing the probability of a future occurrence is the ultimate reward for super forecasters. But this is achieved only if they follow one key principle of improvement – focus on how you think rather than what you think.

Super forecasters recognize that uncertainty is impossible to eliminate. At the same time, nuggets of evidence from many sources build resilience for withstanding and adapting to the next ‘surprise’ including changes in society’s view of appropriate behaviour.

Embrace hard ‘sleuthing’ work

The label of unconscious bias presumes we ‘don’t know what we don’t know’. But it is not an impermeable barrier if we open our minds to different realities from our own. That requires hard sleuthing work on our part using tools already in our tool boxes with familiar names like ‘active listening’, ‘mindfulness’, ‘conflict management’, ‘coaching’ and research. Used intentionally, the data generated by the tools in various contexts reveal deeper insights about thought patterns and behaviours in need of a ‘tune-up’. The mystery surrounding our biases is not solved by asking – “What are they?” but instead, “How am I going to discover them?”

The power of auto-feedback

We can train ourselves to ‘see’ as dragonflies do. Various tools with which we are already familiar provide the necessary ‘friction’ for discovering hidden habits of mind. By slowing down our thinking to boost self-reflection, being open to and seeking others’ viewpoints and resisting the ‘refutation mode’ as our automatic default reaction, we can disrupt and make visible outdated brain algorithms. The rewards are great. The world of ‘perpetual beta’ makes more robust our ‘tip-of-the-nose’ knowledge while boosting our social acumen. The journey is transformational.

But many studies highlight that the environments in which we experience the world play a huge role in bias awareness. Supportive, equitable and inclusive environments in a team, organization and society make the personal task of dragon fly bias interruption considerably easier. A culture of caring elevates feeling psychologically safe – being heard, included and respected for one’s expertise and views. That feeds a virtuous cycle of openness to change.

Counter-intuitively, massive upheaval, as we are experiencing with COVID-19, has provided ‘friction’ challenging systems and attitudes. The pandemic has starkly revealed where change must happen to correct inequities and the leadership needed. It has made evident the best of human nature, one person at a time - hence the value of working on our super forecasting skills.

A caveat – chronically negative environments are not conducive to improving our blind spots. In the face of little hope, survival in the form of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ rises to the forefront, reinforcing stereotypes and exacerbating long-standing grievances.

“Thinking: the power to be finely aware and richly responsible.”

/Alan Jacobs, How to Think, p.49.

 Originally published in LinkedIn on July 12, 2020.

Adelaide's Ghost - How the COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on my family's experience with a diphtheria epidemic 90 years ago

Today's commonly shared COVID-19 experience is a crucible for better understanding others, even family members

By Linda Pickard

Updated May 12, 2020


One Microcosm of an Epidemic’s Effects

Every April, we were reminded by my mother that it was the month of “Adelaide’s birthday”. Sometime in the early 1930's, my eight-year-old aunt Adelaide passed away from diphtheria in a Liverpool hospital. My five-year-old also sick mother in a nearby bed survived. The trauma affected her entire life sometimes positively but more so negatively. 

Over 91 years, depression, paranoia and social behaviour that swung erratically between caring and insensitivity characterized my mother’s life. Critical decisions made by my maternal grandmother and the U.K. government at the time, significantly altered the trajectory of her life. Instead of experiencing a joyful childhood followed by a relatively happy adult journey, she became a victim of what we now call post-traumatic syndrome. It never departed.

Lodged deeply in her psyche was the belief her mother expressed to her that “the good one died”. Her five-year-old fast developing brain stored the guilt, the shame and the lack of sensitivity to her feelings. In today’s context, this “moral injury” mirrors what some soldiers returning from war experience. Health workers may also suffer from the loss of a colleague or certain patients. Perhaps for my mother, there were significant others around bringing comfort and solace. Her despair was likely too strong to take in such healing messages.

The key to improving my aunt’s chance of survival was a vaccine which was available at the time. She did not receive it. Why my mother survived without a vaccine may be due to a variety of factors. One such factor may have been her body’s ability to build its army of antibodies to fight the virus. That she lived into her 91^st year despite her mental anguish may reflect the mystery of a strong constitution.

Some History

Similar to COVID-19, diphtheria, at one time, was a worldwide epidemic mainly affecting industrialized countries. Running rampant in the 1920's and 1930's, it was known as “the strangling ‘angel ‘of children”. It made breathing difficult.  In Canada during 1924, there were nine thousand cases of diphtheria. It was the number one cause of death in children under 14. Then as now, the diphtheria bacterium (not virus) is transmitted through close contact with an infected individual usually through respiratory secretions spread through the air.  How governments responded to this crisis literally affected who would live and who would die. Herein is the source of my mother’s lifetime of sorrow.

Science and Advocacy

Like many diseases for which thankfully we have vaccines, diphtheria has a long history dating back to the 1600's. Advances in its mitigation accelerated in the early twentieth century through the collaborative efforts of scientists worldwide. Pioneering work in a number of countries paved the way for a vaccine. For example, the United Kingdom and France developed an antitoxin for diphtheria. In Canada, the University of Toronto established in 1914 an anti-toxin laboratory (Connaught Laboratories) under the able leadership of Dr. John G. Fitzgerald, a tireless advocate for public health safety and well-being. 

A team of scientists at the Connaught Laboratories forged ahead in “Slaying the Dragon” with clinical trials across Canada. Approximately 36 thousand children participated in carefully controlled studies between 1926 and 1929. These trials proved that a diphtheria toxoid reduced incidence of the disease by about 90% if given in three doses. By the 1930's a vaccine was available for children in Canada, perfect timing for my mother and her older sister. But its safety was not to be for them.

Deadly Travel

My maternal grandmother despite coming to Canada on her own as a 17-year-old to seek a better life yearned for her homeland – Liverpool, the later home of the Beatles. Periodically, to satisfy her discontent, she would gather her children, book passage on a ship and head to Liverpool for a visit. In about 1931, she unwittingly took them smack dab into a raging diphtheria epidemic. Both my mother at age five and her 8-year-old sister became infected with the diphtheria bacterium. One lived, one died.

My aunt, who was born in 1933 at the height of the depression to “replace the lost child”, recently told me that the cost of vaccinating her sisters was about $5.00 each. As my grandmother relayed to my aunt, she could not afford the cost of vaccinating her children. But there is more to the story whether or not cost stood in her way. Had my mother’s mother remained in Canada, Adelaide might have lived because of what we now call the “herd effect”.  That is, there are enough children inoculated to prevent the spread of the disease to those who have not been vaccinated.

What made the difference given that many countries around the world were joining the “Slaying the Dragon” movement? In Britain, a number of barriers intervened - government reluctance, concern about efficacy, lack of effective organization in the U.K. and what we now call “anti-vaxxers”. People opposed to experimenting on animals vocalized their resistance to a vaccine too. Local governments in the U.K. at the town level did their best to provide protection against the diphtheria epidemic. They struggled for funding in the absence of a coordinated country approach to vaccinating children. It was not until World War II that the British became serious about the widespread availability of a diphtheria vaccine followed by many others for children. Finally there was “buy-in”!

Nevertheless, diphtheria outbreaks still occur. Nations experiencing social disruption and conflict and reluctance to vaccinate are key reasons for the fluctuating number of global cases up to the present time. Constant vigilance is a must.  

  

Lessons for COVID-19

The COVID-19 journey combines lessons learned from past experiences and new ones we are creating in search of good solutions.

Universal health care and government support

Let’s count our blessings now for the level of government support and public health interventions that are leading us in “slaying” COVID-19. Heroes long forgotten in our collective memories such as Tommy Douglas (Keifer Sutherland’s grandfather) along with many advocates brought us universal health care, a necessary tool for fighting on the front lines. 

Innovation

Courageous and curious infectious disease researchers such as John Fitzgerald’s team and many that followed him nationally and globally to this day shed more and more light on the nature and prevention of infectious diseases. Collaboration abounds across the world and within nations.

Bill Gates and other wealthy funders through their respective foundations have worked together for years with the World Health Organization (WHO) along with numerous local health organizations globally to increase vaccination rates and improve the living circumstances of the most vulnerable. Science and leadership are our saviours for which I am most grateful.

Safety, connection and kindness - precious gifts of COVID-19

My mother suffered from a lifelong distrust of hospitals, doctors and fear of sickness. Whenever I or my two sisters became ill, she would sit by our bedsides for hours ensuring herself that we were going to be OK. She sought the best medical support available for us even for our teeth! But, for her ailments, she was a difficult patient often embarrassing us with her rude antics when in the presence of anyone in the medical profession. We were mystified. A second near death experience (sepsis after childbirth) likely explained much of her behaviour.

Everywhere she saw “the enemy”. It became a family “dragon” we were neither able to slay nor understand. How could her family as we were lucky recipients of the prosperous decades in the late twentieth and twenty-first  centuries? Despite periodic psychiatric counselling, the world to my mother was not a safe and kind place. 

Nevertheless, she managed to create a number of positives in her life. As an avid reader with wide-ranging interests, she could always contribute well-thought out views in any conversation. She worked part-time over many years to add to the family income, something that gave her purpose and enhanced her well-being. Mid-life the call to upgrading her education beckoned. Having only a grade 11 education as a foundation, she managed to gain entry to the University of Toronto’s continuing education program for older adults, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in political science. 

Later, when she and I embarked on a road trip from Toronto to Los Angeles, the unhappy mother I knew turned into an enthusiastic, happy and curious traveler, content to sight-see and meet interesting people at our rest stops. Ironically, her passion for politics was well-served. Our road trip coincided with the immediate after-math of Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States in 2008. We gained first hand insights into the thoughts of Americans at each stop of the way. She was in her element! 

It is clearer now, thanks to COVID-19. Safety, connection, kindness and purpose were the drivers of my mother’s periodic happiness. These are the same qualities that are surfacing more in our collective struggle to win the battle over COVID-19. All cultures yearn for these not just during a crisis but always. But, will they fade post-COVID-19 by the pull back to tribalism and ‘us’ versus ‘them’?

The way forward

COVID-19 is a global transformational experience. For example, it is helping me better understand my mother, and, by association – others. That means then that going back to the same-old, same-old is not possible. The path forward will be different not only for me but for many. Will we be more divided? Less divided?

We know from a vast amount of behavioural science research that a more prosperous, fairer world has a greater probability of coming into being with inclusiveness. It will not be easy to make that happen. The virus has rattled us, making us more protective and more wary of others not like ourselves, not part of our "in" groups. We innovate less from that stance, often finding less satisfaction.  It will require considerable effort by each one of us to opt instead for a higher level of “inclusive fitness”. One that embraces not rejects the simplicity and reward of the diversity bonus. We are simulating that world mindset currently through our shared COVID-19 immersion. It is life-changing. For that reason we might find working with our differences for the greater good easier than before the pandemic.

Linda Pickard, Ph.D. is an award-winning educator and designer of leadership development experiences. She is also an executive coach and specialist in the neuroscience of diversity and inclusion. She is currently working on a new book on the latter topic with a colleague.