Often seen as being a negative trait, bias is actually a good thing in general and we would be dysfunctional without it. How would you like to spend your time relearning how to shave your face every morning? Careful you don’t cut yourself.
Bias is an unconscious belief that influences, governs, and compels our behavior. It is a mental shortcut based on past experiences that allows us to repeat an action without going through all the mental steps of the original action. Just like shaving.
It is the filter of our personal point of view that helps in triggering pattern recognition. For the most part our biases and the assumptions made from them are highly accurate and become more so as we grow older. Consider driving, while not having as quick or sharp reflexes compared to a teenager, older drivers are able to unconsciously recognize the patterns of dangerous situations and have developed those self-protective biases to avoid accidents.
Let’s say I am reaching for that light switch in a dark room. “Where is the switch? It should be right there inside the doorway about chest high. Everywhere else I have been, that’s where it is!” When it is not where we expect, we are confronted with our “bias”. Do we recognize the error of our thinking, or do we cuss out the building’s designer that couldn’t put the light switch where it should be? Oh, wait, you found the switch and… nothing happened. What does your bias tell you is the cause? Burnt out bulb, maybe?
In Critical Thinking, being aware of biases is helpful to understand what could influence our initial thinking that can get in the way of objectivity. The fact that these unconscious mental shortcuts are processing information, we need to recognize that this new information consistent with our biases will also be assigned higher value than the ambiguous information. Blindly accepting those conclusions without analysis can be at the expense of the truth.
Bias is natural, unconscious, and necessary for survival. It should not be confused with prejudice and bigotry, which are related to conscious or intended behavior with potential for adverse or harmful consequences.
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This is really relevant to today's world in USA. I'm completely baffled by talk about trigger phases that have hidden meanings to ethnic groups when I've never heard of such phrases. Generally people, myself included, have an inflated estimate of our importance to others we might interact with. This is prevalent in the navigation of car traffic. Most people have tunnel vision about their life and were they are going and hardly acknowledge the person driving the other cars. In fact I can't see the person driving most of the time. I doubt any of them really are trying to irritate me with their driving.