Everyone employs bias—otherwise known as cognitive shortcuts—in their lives every day. Imagine you’re scrolling through your social media feed and immediately dismiss a news article because it comes from a source you don’t typically trust. Or maybe you’re convinced your favorite restaurant is the best in town, remembering all the great meals you’ve eaten there while forgetting that mediocre dinner last month.
These biases aren’t character flaws. Thousands of years ago, this type of quick decision-making ensured the safety of ancient humans. Our brains have evolved to recognize patterns quickly and jump to conclusions based on limited information.
Although these mental shortcuts served us well long ago, they don’t always translate well in our complex modern world. For several decades, psychology researchers have been testing interventions that help people become aware of and minimize biases people hold today.
A new systematic review published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour offers the most comprehensive look at bias training yet. Researchers combined the results from 54 randomized controlled trials involving nearly 11,000 students to determine whether educational interventions can reduce cognitive biases.
The studies used a wide range of approaches, including games, online simulations, classroom instruction, video-based training, and group discussions. The analysis found that the interventions provided a small but significant improvement in reducing the likelihood of bias.
The most successful interventions from the studies focused on teaching specific cognitive strategies to neutralize particular biases. These strategies include actively seeking out contradictory evidence when evaluating a claim and using structured checklists to avoid jumping to conclusions.
Interestingly, the research revealed that some biases were more difficult to avoid than others. For example, people are more likely to hold onto representativeness heuristic biases which are judgments based on how people or situations match particular stereotypes – for example, assuming that someone who wears glasses and reads a lot is a librarian..
In their discussion of the results, the researchers issued some important caveats. Questions remain whether the lessons transfer beyond classroom settings; just because someone can avoid confirmation bias in an online test doesn’t mean they will use those new skills in the real world. This gap between laboratory performance and real-world application represents the next frontier in bias research, researchers said.
This field is important because cognitive biases can have far-reaching consequences in modern society, influencing medical diagnoses, public policy decisions, elections, and more.
The take-home message: This review provides solid evidence that bias reduction is possible. Now, researchers need to find the best ways to translate these improvements into meaningful changes in real-world decision-making.
