Attentional- Availability Biases | Cognitive Biases Series

Hey there everybody, and welcome to this video on Availability biases. This is part of the Cognitive Biases series. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. In general, availability biases are the tendency to base expectations on information that is either most recent or most emotionally charged. There are several types of availability biases. The first one is the availability heuristic, or the tendency to notice things that have most recently occurred. Some examples Employee Evaluations this is a perfect example of when the availability heuristic often comes into play because we remember what the employee has done over the past month or maybe three months, and we often forget what happened at the beginning of the year. Now, as supervisors, we want to take into consideration development and progress and changes and things. But it's important to look at the entire year, not just the last three months. We can see the same thing with child behavior. You may judge a child child's overall behavior based on how they've been behaving for the past week or the past month, as opposed to looking at several months or a year or different settings that the child is in to examine what might be causing this behavior. But it is important to make sure that we're considering all of the information. Same thing with relationship satisfaction. You may be in a rough spot in your relationship right now. All relationships have bumpy times. Do you look at that relationship and say my relationship is miserable and has always been miserable because you've been unhappy for the past two weeks? Or do you consider the entire time you've been together and recognize that this two weeks is an exception to the rule? Mood and pain can also be the same way. You notice that you're in a bad mood or you're in pain and you may have the tendency to think I'm always in pain or I'm always depressed because you've been in pain or depressed for the past week. But when you look at the bigger picture, is that accurate? Solutions to this journaling so you can keep track of when these things happen. When I was a supervisor, I would regularly make notes in my employees files so when it came time for evaluations I could go back over it and look at the entire year, the good things and the mistakes in order to give a more well rounded evaluation. Same thing for child behavior. If your child is having difficulties journaling in order to see the exceptions, when is this not happening that they're acting inappropriately? Anchored recall is another technique that you can use instead of if you haven't journaled. Thinking back to how is this person performing last fall Last October. How is this person performing around the holidays? How is this person performing in the springtime? Anything that you can use to give your Give yourself a time anchor in order to evaluate that person over a longer period of time or in multiple contexts and seek exceptions. Our availability heuristic is based on what has most recently occurred. So maybe somebody made a mistake or broke a promise, or did something most recently. We tend to think of that as happening more frequently than it really does. So look for exceptions. When have they not done that? When have they acted differently, or when have you felt differently? The frequency illusion is another type of availability bias. Once something is coming to your attention, you often notice it with improbable frequency in the near term. Examples we have chickens, and we used to have chickens that were on complete free roam in the yard. And we would lose a lot to hawks. And and when we would have a hawk attack, I would become more aware of the hawks cawing or crowing or whatever it is they do, the sounds they make before they attack. And it would seem a lot more frequent than maybe it actually happened. Red cars or any color cars. If you notice a particular color car, maybe you just got a new car and it's red. All of a sudden you're driving around and you're surprised at how many other cars on the road are red. Well, that's a frequency illusion. Because you're driving a red car, you're paying more attention to red cars. Or because you're driving an SUV, you're paying more attention to SUVs. Sneezing, coughing, sick people. A lot of us are paying more attention to other people's behavior, and we may notice it now more than we noticed it before. And it seems a whole lot more frequent. Even though people are probably sneezing and coughing at the same rate as they were six months ago or even three years ago. But it seems more frequent now because we're paying more attention to it. Rudeness and microaggressions are the same thing. When somebody is rude to you or, or you are taught to start paying attention to microaggressions, then you notice them a whole lot more. And you may think that they're occurring more frequently than they actually are because you didn't pay attention to them before. So you think all of a sudden there's been this huge increase. Well, maybe it's just you didn't notice them before. Solutions Seek alternate perspectives. Is this factually happening more frequently? What does somebody else think? Does somebody else share your perception that this is increasing? Find A complementary probability. So let's go to red cars, start looking for yellow cars, and see if you start thinking that yellow cars are more prevalent on the road than you did before. It just is a way of training your mind to recognize that it's paying more attention to one thing now because it noticed it recently. And find objective data or statistics. How many people actually drive red cars versus blue cars versus yellow cars versus whatever. How many people are sick right now? And you know, there are times, like flu season, when people will be sneezing and coughing more than times when it's not flu season. So objective data, if you start noticing people sneezing and coughing more often, you can check the data. Is it all in my head, or are people actually sneezing or coughing more often? And on my weather app, it actually tells us, you know, in your area, the flu level right now is, you know, high, moderate, or low. And so that's one place, not the only place, but that's one place I can go to get objective data to see, is this really happening or am I just noticing it more? The salience bias means focusing on things that are more prominent or emotionally charged. Examples. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of the salience bias is Cyrano Javert. And he had the. The big nose, if you remember the play. And the big nose tended to evoke a guttural response, an emotional response from people because it was so disproportionate to the rest of his face. And so when we think of Cyrano, that's the first thing that we think of. We focus on that one thing because it's the most prominent and it evokes an emotional response in us. People with body dysmorphic disorder also may have a similar experience, even if their perceived flaw is not as noticeable as Serenoda Versurex, to them it is. And so when they look in the mirror, that is what they see, whereas other people may not even notice it, but they notice it's the first thing they see when they look in the mirror. Mood is another thing that can be impacted by the salience bias. If you notice that you're in a bad mood. And you may notice the times that you're depressed or the times that you're anxious, more so than you notice the times when you're happy, because when you're happy, you're happy and you like feeling that way. But the times when you're upset, those stick with you. And so it's important to really look, chart it out. You know, yes, you were depressed during this period, but then how did you feel for the next three months or six months or year in order to recognize am I really always feeling depressed or anxious or does it come in bursts? They're intense bursts, but they're bursts. Or focusing on the one thing that you did that made me mad or the one mistake I made. This is the salience bias because something triggered distress, triggered an emotionally charged reaction to. So that's what I'm going to focus on to the exception of everything else. Solutions Mindful acceptance Get into your wise mind in order to be able to actually examine the facts. Unhook. Once you're in your wise mind, unhook from that feeling, that emotional charged thing, and explore the big picture. Un. Unhook from that prominent thing that you're focusing on. Ignore it, or try to ignore it and look and see what else is going on. What else might I be missing? Embrace the dialectics, which means embrace the good with the bad. Yes, I made a mistake and I had some successes. So embracing both of those and eliminate cognitive distortions and I've got videos on the YouTube channel on negative thinking styles and cognitive distortions. But things like personalization or all or nothing thinking tend to be characteristic of the salience bias. Personalization. I will remember things that are emotionally charged because I feel like they're my fault. And all or nothing thinking tends to also make us feel disempowered and unsafe and tends to make us feel angry. So it's emotionally charged. So we tend to remember things. If we're using all or nothing thinking, those things tend to take a more prominent focus. Partial picture bias focusing only on what is presented instead of the whole picture. And this is related to salience. For example, some people think that particular breeds of dog are dangerous because when they've bitten people, it's gotten a lot of publicity, whereas other dogs, when they bite people, it doesn't get as much publicity. I've been around a lot of little dogs, a particular breed of little dogs that tend to be very, very nippy but. Or bitey, if you will, but because they're so little. A bite is not nearly as devastating as it is in a particular breed of big dog. But the partial picture. We only hear about this particular breed of dog when it bites somebody. And the only dog bites we hear about come from these particular breeds. We don't hear about the, the cocker spaniels or the Chihuahuas or the, you know, other dogs that bite. So we're only getting a partial Picture? Yes. Dogs bite. All dogs bite. And that's not what's communicated in the media, for example. So we need to step back and take a look at the big picture. Is it the breed? Was it the situation? And do other breeds do it? And in what situations? Plane crashes. It's another example of partial picture. The news tells us about plane crashes. It doesn't tell us about the 20,000 flights a day that land successfully. Partial picture characterizations of people. Whether it's on social media or one particular interaction you have with somebody on a particularly bad day or however or on media. Media. A lot of times we make characterizations of people based on only a partial picture, one or two experiences or hearsay from somebody else. And instead of looking at the big picture, this person behaved this way at this time. However, how do they behave the rest of the time? Solutions Always look for what's not being said. What's the other side of the picture? We know that more than one plane flies every year. So what about all of those other flights? We know that there are lots of other dogs out there. So you know, do they bite? Well actually yeah, they do. So that's what's not being said. Look for what's not being said to balance out the picture. Seek facts for and against your belief. So if you have a belief that this particular breed of dog is dangerous, seek facts for and against that belief. How much more dangerous is it than any other breed of dog? Plane crashes, Same thing. Facts for and against it. Let's look at the frequency of crashes. Let's look at how safe it is versus other modes of transportation. All of this can help you get a better full picture of what's going on. Attentional bias means paying attention to your recurring thoughts, whether they're based in fact or not. If you tell yourself for example, I'm a screw up or people are not trustworthy or I'm powerless over everything all the time, then guess what? That is what you're going to believe. And it's going to influence your your perception and your of situations, your self esteem and your expectations. Solutions. Become aware of your recurring thoughts and selft talk. Some of them are going to be accurate, some of them are not going to be accurate. And you can, once you become aware of it, then you can start addressing it. Unhook from those thoughts. Thoughts are not necessarily facts. Thoughts are just words. So then you need to look at the facts for and against those thoughts. Attentional biases tend to be skewed toward the most recent and the most unpleasant aspects of situations. This is our brain's way of trying to keep us safe. This can contribute, however, to low self esteem and an increased sense of anxiety and danger in the environment and in relationships. Becoming more aware of your attentional biases, becoming aware of the bigger picture can be extremely helpful at reducing distress and anxiety and improving your self esteem.