...Social Biases University of Phoenix Dr. Kinsey August 20, 2012 Social Biases In today’s society social biases can be a problem because many people may look down on another person or group. People and groups can look down on another person believing he or she is better than the other. This type of social influence that some groups may have can generate common biases. Social biases can hinder interaction between people and become very damaging to people (Fiske, 2010). “Just as aggression research reveals the basic social psychology of processes that can prove deadly, the research on bias reveals processes that are demonstrably unhealthy and sometimes deadly for both agents and targets of bias” (Fiske, 2010, p. 428). Characterizing a specific way of thinking or the way a person is being view is sometimes called bias. People’s behavior and attitude which may be influenced by judgment can be displayed as bias. Many people do not realize they are bias, because it is not common to know you the person is bias. Others may identify a person being bias but one may not realize they are bias. In this paper I will define the concept of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. Explain the differences between subtle and blatant bias, and identify some common bias and ways to prevent bias in today’s society. Concept of Social Bias Social Bias is “prejudice attitudes toward particular groups, races, sexes, or religions, including the conscious or unconscious...
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...Social Biases Paper Psych 555 May 5, 2013 Dr. Anthony Social Biases Paper Bias is generally described as favoring thinking of particular way, or something to watch. Being biased means attitude of that person or behavior is particularly prejudice. The person may be aware of that he is bias. Social prejudices are a social problem, because a group is looking at another individual or group as the group feels that they are superior to others. The social interaction among some groups might have to create common biases. Social biases may be very harmful and can interfere with human interaction (Fiske, 2010). Define the concepts of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination Prejudice means feeling or having attitude towards members of a group, established solely on the basis of membership in this group. Stereotypes dealt with generalizations regarding others that usually cause display of others group predictable and typical characteristics. Discrimination means an act of a group or person against another group or person who is the prejudice subject. Stereotypes put people into groups having similar attributes or characteristics. Stereotypes have the ability to distort the perspective of a person. As soon as a stereotype becomes active, the features belong to the group, either positive or negative, they are easy to remember. Stereotypes can influence social judgments on how much a person loves another, and this behavior is normal. There was a time when because of the stereotyping...
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...Social Biases name Psych 555 date instructor Social Biases Bias comes in many forms, including race, age, gender, and ethnicity and can be universal or location specific (Fiske, 2010). It is described as favoring thinking of particular way, or something to watch. Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are all forms of biases because of the treatment the individual receives from others (Fiske, 2010). Bias is defined as “a particular tendency or inclination, especially one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice” (Bias, n.d.). Social interactions between some groups might create common biases. Social biases may be harmful and interfere with human interaction (Fiske, 2010). Define concepts of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination Prejudice is a baseless and usually negative attitude toward members of a group. Fiske (2010) states “prejudice entails reacting emotionally to an individual on the basis of one’s feeling about the group as a whole” (p. 429). Prejudice can be based on a number of factors including, nationality, religion, sexual orientations, age, race, and sex. The most commonly seen prejudice in society is racism, sexism, ageism, religious prejudice, homophobia, and nationalism. Every race, culture, country, and community has a stereotype. By stereotyping a group, it has become a way to oversimplifying the group. Stereotyping is often negative and exaggerated; it is a set of generalizations about...
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...Is it possible to overcome biases? In Vera Myers TED talk, she represents a very strong demonstration that is related to biases. She emphasizes a variety of examples that represent the strong opinions there is against black men. There is the violence and brutality we have seen in the past decades against those with colored skin. Vera Myers expounds on the possible outcome of overcoming biases and how we are all humans to be treated equal. Therefore, the question is, is it possible to overcome biases? Yes, it is possible to overcome biases. Myers starts off her presentation with listening to the book “the warmth of the other suns.” She acknowledges the story of black people who were fleeing the South from 1915 to 1970 looking for freedom from all brutality and tried to search for a better opportunity up North. She stresses the stories of African-Americans, whom were filled with horror and humiliations. She concludes the burnings and lynching of black men. This violence and brutality against black men has been going around for centuries and all it has done is expand the racism against colored people. It has caused humiliation, sadness, depression, pain, loss of love and respect. We need to learn how to control or overcome our bad biases in order to end this Ferguson happenings. People of color know the meaning of being in full alert due to their past history. The form of our bad biases, has formed the slavery and lynching against colored people. Myers says that stereotypes...
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...on the investment staff of a family office. Pompian is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), a Certified Financial Planner (CFP), and a Certified Trust Financial Advisor (CTFA). He is also a member of the CFA Institute (formerly AIMR) and the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA). He holds a BS in management from the University of New Hampshire and an MBA in finance from Tulane University. Pompian is a regular speaker on the subject of behavioral finance and has published several articles on the subject. He is married with three sons and can be reached at michael.pompian@mercer.com. “ Michael M. Pompian describes various biases which we can see in human beings , also tells about various experiments on human beings in his book “ BEHAVIOURAL FINANCE AND WEALTH MANAGEMENT “ and tells “HOW TO BUILD OPTIMAL PORTFOLIOS THAT ACCOUNTS FOR INVESTOR BIASES “ The book is published by John wiley and sons, inc. ,Hoboken , New jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada. The book was published in the year 2006 . SUMMARY : Understanding the use of behavioral finance theory in investing is a important topic these days. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman has described financial advising as a prescriptive activity whose main objective should be to guide investors to...
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...The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational George Dvorsky The human brain is capable of 1016 processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any computer currently in existence. But that doesn't mean our brains don't have major limitations. The lowly calculator can do math thousands of times better than we can, and our memories are often less than useless — plus, we're subject to cognitive biases, those annoying glitches in our thinking that cause us to make questionable decisions and reach erroneous conclusions. Here are a dozen of the most common and pernicious cognitive biases that you need to know about. Before we start, it's important to distinguish between cognitive biases and logical fallacies. A logical fallacy is an error in logical argumentation (e.g. ad hominem attacks, slippery slopes, circular arguments, appeal to force, etc.). A cognitive bias, on the other hand, is a genuine deficiency or limitation in our thinking — a flaw in judgment that arises from errors of memory, social attribution, and miscalculations (such as statistical errors or a false sense of probability). Some social psychologists believe our cognitive biases help us process information more efficiently, especially in dangerous situations. Still, they lead us to make grave mistakes. We may be prone to such errors in judgment, but at least we can be aware of them. Here are some important ones to keep in mind. Confirmation Bias We love to agree with people who...
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...“Introspection Illusion” Introspection Illusion is defined as a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable (Wikipedia). Introspection tends to be the evidence one receives about their self as they look to their own thoughts and feelings, and adding an illusion to this mix adds a misty fog that people look through as they look inward. In this paper I will attempt to show how Introspection Illusion affects us not only in our day to day lives, but how it can also have a major impact on our financial decisions. Introspection Illusion was first defined by Emily Pronin. She observed how people viewed their selves and how aware they were of their motives, thoughts and feelings. This awareness, however, is often weak and unreliable. Eric Schwitzgebel argues this case by stating that “introspection is unreliable in the sense that we are prone to ignorance and error in making introspective judgments about our own conscious experience,” (Smithies). In this sense, our inner motives, thoughts and feelings are strictly biased based on our limited understanding of the world surrounding and with little thought to the personal introspections of others around us. So why then do we rely so much on our introspection? Pronin claims that it is because they are intimate and comfortable, which makes it easy and safe to believe in the classic statement of “I think therefore I am...
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...actually gets chosen/ judged The reasons why descriptive decisions are different from normative decisions: Bounded rationality: time cost constraints; incomplete information; perceptiual errors in obtaining information; cognitive load in information retention and performing caluculations Bounded decision making: We seek solutions that are the best given the information that is available; that are satisfactory (good enough) We satisfice rather than optimize Assumptions of bounded rationality: Limited search for criteria: rely on familiar criteria already in effect Limited review of alternatives: fous on easily found alternatives Satisficing: select the first alternative that is good enough Decision making—Biases and Fallacies in daily life: Biases: systematic distortions or patterns of error in judgment Fallacies: use of...
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...Chapter 5 – Social Cognition Debate: Faith and Social Cognition * Carolyn Briggs: involved in and then rejected. Christian fundamentalism. How can someone believe so intensely and then reject those same beliefs? How are our beleifs shaped by those around us? Consider some cognitive biases and errors you have made. **Social cognition: Study of how people think about people and social relationships. -What is unique about thinking about people as opposed to thinking about something else, like frogs or computers? Why is it important to study how people think about people? -How is argumentative thinking helpful? Why would arguing with others help with human survival? **Thinking Cognitive Miser: Exemplified by having errors in thinking. Reluctance to do much extra thinking. -During free time, why do most people choose to think about a subject such as baseball, but not about a subject such as calculus? **Automatic and deliberate thinking How does the Stroop Effect (colors and words) illustrate automatic versus deliberate thought? How do we know if a thought is automatic? -Requires no awareness -not guided by intention -not subject to deliberate control -effort is low Schemas: information about a concept. Ex/Schema for exams = involves multi paged paper and #2 pencil. Scripts: Schemas about certain events. How an experience and an event will play out. Ex/ For exam… come into class, cram before instructor says put materials away, administered exam...
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...CONTE NTS Introduction 1 WHY YOU SHOULD VISIT CEMETERIES: Survivorship Bias 2 DOES HARVARD MAKE YOU SMARTER?: Swimmer’s Body Illusion 3 WHY YOU SEE SHAPES IN THE CLOUDS: Clustering Illusion 4 IF 50 MILLION PEOPLE SAY SOMETHING FOOLISH, IT IS STILL FOOLISH: Social Proof 5 WHY YOU SHOULD FORGET THE PAST: Sunk Cost Fallacy 6 DON’T ACCEPT FREE DRINKS: Reciprocity 7 BEWARE THE ‘SPECIAL CASE’: Confirmation Bias (Part 1) 8 MURDER YOUR DARLINGS: Confirmation Bias (Part 2) 9 DON’T BOW TO AUTHORITY: Authority Bias 10 LEAVE YOUR SUPERMODEL FRIENDS AT HOME: Contrast Effect 11 WHY WE PREFER A WRONG MAP TO NO MAP AT ALL: Availability Bias 12 WHY ‘NO PAIN, NO GAIN’ SHOULD SET ALARM BELLS RINGING: The It’llGet-Worse-Before-It-Gets-Better Fallacy 13 EVEN TRUE STORIES ARE FAIRYTALES: Story Bias 14 WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP A DIARY: Hindsight Bias 15 WHY YOU SYSTEMATICALLY OVERESTIMATE YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND ABILITIES: Overconfidence Effect 16 DON’T TAKE NEWS ANCHORS SERIOUSLY: Chauffeur Knowledge 17 YOU CONTROL LESS THAN YOU THINK: Illusion of Control 18 NEVER PAY YOUR LAWYER BY THE HOUR: Incentive Super-Response Tendency 19 THE DUBIOUS EFFICACY OF DOCTORS, CONSULTANTS AND PSYCHOTHERAPISTS: Regression to Mean 20 NEVER JUDGE A DECISION BY ITS OUTCOME: Outcome Bias 21 LESS IS MORE: The Paradox of Choice 22 YOU LIKE ME, YOU REALLY REALLY LIKE ME: Liking Bias 23 DON’T CLING TO THINGS: Endowment Effect 24 THE INEVITABILITY OF UNLIKELY Events: Coincidence 25 THE CALAMITY OF CONFORMITY: Groupthink 26 WHY...
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...1. Introduction Analysts are key financial market participants. Researchers often use analysts’ earnings forecasts as proxies for market expectations and differences in opinions. In addition, analysts’ earnings forecasts are one of the rare settings for which researchers have a large natural data set of individual analysts’ actual decisions, and for which the biases in decision making can be observed and verified ex-post. Not surprisingly, the activities of analysts have been a fertile ground for behavioral research. Prior studies have shown that analysts often suffer from a number of biases. However, the implications of these potential cognitive biases for investors and, even more so for managers, are less understood. This study considers the behavior of financial market participants from a perspective different from that of previous research. It focuses on anchoring bias, a topic that has been characterized by Hirshleifer (2001) as an important part of “dynamic psychology-based assetpricing theory in its infancy” (p. 1535). “Anchoring” describes the fact that, in forming numerical estimates of uncertain quantities, adjustments in assessments away from some initial value are often insufficient. One of the first studies of this cognitive bias is the seminal experiment by Kahneman and Tversky (1974). These authors report that estimates of an uncertain proportion (the percentage of African nations in the United Nations) were affected by a number between 0 and 100...
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...Six Factors That Distort Performance Appraisals Multiple psychological factors can sway evaluators to rate employees a certain way. Most companies use performance appraisals, also known as job evaluations, to determine whether employees are meeting expectations, and to get some clues about how the employee could improve for the benefit of the business. Even so, performance appraisals have a major flaw in that they are not completely objective. Six major factors cause distortions in performance appraisals. 1. Stereotyping * People usually can fall into at least one general category based on physical or behavioral traits, and performance evaluators sometimes let stereotypes associated with those categories sway their employee appraisals. For example, a boss might assume that because many Asians excel, an Asian worker who doesn't meet a performance objective simply isn't working hard enough, even if the worker tried his best. Similarity * Often, people tend to seek out and rate more positively those who are similar to themselves. This tendency to approve of similarity may cause evaluators to give better ratings to employees who exhibit the same interests, work methods, points of view or standards. A major problem with this cause of distortion is that it can stifle innovation in a company, as "different" people must struggle to rise in the ranks. Leniency * Leniency, sometimes referred to as inflation, is the tendency of evaluators to give employees higher...
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...The story is about a ski instructor named Miranda who is having several issues with her new boss, Hank because he has done and said many things over the course of the time that he has been there to show that he may be sexist. This scenario has a lot to do with perception. Perception is defined as “a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment” (Robbins & Judge, 166). This paper will discuss what perception is and how much of an impact in can have in the work place. Miranda’s perception of her boss Hank is that he is a sexist. The initial problem that is discussed is the fact that she did not like the fact that as one of the most experienced ski instructors at the resort but she was only being assigned to teach the children instead of the adults, the same for all the other female instructors. She sees how Hank separates the men and the women instructor to have a meeting about work procedure, “After introducing himself and Harika, he took the men to one room, and Harika took the women to another,” (Cohan, Fink,Gadon, Willits & Josefowitz, 2013). That was the first thing that bothered her because she could not understand what it is that had to be said to only the male instructors that could not also be said to the female. Although this bothered her initially, she decided to find a positive side to the situation, and went along with it. The more she went along with what was going around the job place...
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...Perception and Individual decision-making (Robertson) Perception Perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. However, what we perceive can be substantially different from objective reality. People’s behaviour is based on their perception of what reality is, not reality itself. Factors that influence it Attribution theory The attribution theory is an attempt to determine whether an individual’s behaviour is internally or externally caused. Internally caused behaviours are those we believe to be under the personal control of the individual whereas externally caused behaviour is what we imagine the situation forced the individual to do. * Determinants of attribution 1. Distinctiveness: what we want to know is whether behaviour is unusual, if so we are likely to give it an external attribution. If not we will probably judge the behaviour to be internal. 2. Consensus: behaviour shows consensus when everyone who faces a similar situation responds in the same way. If consensus is high you will probably give an external attribution to the individual’s behaviour whereas if the consensus is low it will be attributed to an internal cause. 3. Consistency: does the person respond the say way over time? The more consistent the behaviour is the more we are inclined to attribute it to internal factors. ...
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...CORPORATE FINANCE HONOURS 2011-2012 Topic: Behavioural corporate finance Lecturer: Yue (Lucy) Liu E-mail: Yue.Liu@ed.ac.uk Outline Psychological phenomena Biases Heuristics Framing effects Impact on corporate finance Valuation Capital Budgeting Capital structure Dividend policy Mergers and acquisitions Yue (Lucy) Liu 2011/2012 Corporate Finance 2 Psychological phenomena Bias Excessive optimism Overconfidence Confirmation bias Illusion of control Heuristics Representativeness Availability Anchoring and adjustment Affect Heuristic Framing effects Loss aversion Aversion to a sure loss Yue (Lucy) Liu 2011/2012 Corporate Finance 3 Biases Bias A predisposition toward error. – Excessive optimism People overestimate how frequently they will experience favorable outcomes and underestimate how frequently they will experience unfavorable outcomes. – Overconfidence People make mistakes more frequently than they believe and view themselves as better than average. – Confirmation bias People attach too much importance to information that supports their views relative to information that runs counter to their views. – Illusion of control People overestimate the extent to which they can control events. Yue (Lucy) Liu 2011/2012 Corporate Finance 4 Heuristics Heuristic A rule of thumb used to make a decision. – Representativeness People make judgments based on stereotypic thinking, asking how representative...
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