Domain-General Lessons
When you realize you were wrong, asking why can reveal cognitive biases like confirmation bias and recency bias. These lessons improve judgment beyond the domain in which the error occurred.
THE IDEA
LEARNING DOMAIN-GENERAL LESSONS
Remember Bethany Brookshire? She's the journalist we met in chapter 4 who tweeted that male scientists were more likely to call her "Ms.," while female scientists were more likely to call her "Dr.," but then fact-checked her own claim and realized she was wrong. Brookshire's decision to check her claim, even though she could easily have gotten away with not doing so, was commendable. But was it useful?
When a forecaster recognizes he was wrong, it helps him make better forecasts. When an investor recognizes he was wrong, it helps him make better investments. In Brookshire's case, however, her error doesn't seem relevant to any particular domain in which she would benefit from improved judgment. So, at first glance, the answer to the question "Was it useful for Brookshire to notice her error?" might seem to be "no."
But that would be missing one of the biggest benefits of noticing your errors: the opportunity to improve your judgment in general. When Brookshire realized she had been wrong, she asked herself why, and pinpointed two likely culprits. One was confirmation bias: "I had a preexisting belief that men wouldn't respect me as much in email as women," Brookshire realized, "and I most remembered the observations that confirmed this belief, forgetting entirely the evidence that showed me my belief was wrong." The other was recency bias: "I was giving more weight to things that I had observed recently, forgetting things I had observed in the past," she concluded.
Those lessons aren't just relevant to estimating gender bias in emails. They're domain-general, meaning that they apply to a wide variety of different domains, as opposed to domain-specific lessons that apply only to a single domain, like political forecasting or investing. Domain-general lessons are about how the world works, or how your own brain works, and about the kinds of biases that tend to influence your judgment. For example:
It's easy to be fooled by cherry-picked evidence.
If it seems like someone is saying something dumb, I might be misunderstanding them.
Even when I feel certain, there's still a chance I'm wrong.
You might think these principles sound obvious and that you know them already. But "knowing" a principle, in the sense that you read it and say, "Yes, I know that," is different from having internalized it in a way that actually changes how you think. Brookshire already knew about confirmation bias and recency bias before her viral post. She was a science journalist. She had read about biases and knew that she was vulnerable to them, as all humans are. But such knowledge doesn't really become part of you until you've derived it for yourself by going through the experience of realizing you were wrong, asking yourself why, and seeing the effect of the bias at work.
Even when you're wrong about something random or trivial, there are still generally useful lessons to be had. When I was a teenager, I watched a few episodes of Batman, a TV show that aired in the United States in the late 1960s. It's a campy, over-the-top show in which grown men wearing leotards run around shouting things like, "Holy ravioli, Batman!" Yet I thought it had been intended as a serious adventure show for audiences of the sixties, who I figured were simply too unsophisticated to realize how silly it all was. When I later found out that I was wrong, and Batman was always considered camp, I was taken aback. My domain-general lesson was one that has stuck with me ever since: "Huh . . . Maybe I'm too quick to assume that other people are simpletons."
• • •
So far in this chapter we've explored two ways in which scouts think about error differently from most people. First, they revise their opinions incrementally over time, which makes it easier to be open to evidence against their beliefs. Second, they view errors as opportunities to hone their skill at getting things right, which makes the experience of realizing "I was wrong" feel valuable, rather than just painful.
There's one more lens on error worth noting—a fundamentally different way of thinking about what it means to be wrong.
When to use it
After making a mistake at work, instead of just moving on, take time to analyze why you made that error.
When you argue with someone and later realize you were wrong, use that experience to identify any cognitive biases that influenced your thinking.
In evaluating a past decision that turned out poorly, seek domain-general lessons that can apply to future decisions in different areas.
When reading a news article that confirms your existing views, deliberately consider counterevidence and check for recency bias.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Bethany Brookshire's Email Salutation Bias
Bethany Brookshire noticed that she had a bias in remembering emails: she thought male scientists called her 'Ms.' more often than female scientists, but upon fact-checking she found she was wrong. She identified confirmation bias and recency bias as causes.
Author's Batman Misjudgment
The author as a teenager watched 'Batman' from the 1960s and assumed it was meant to be serious, thinking audiences back then were unsophisticated. He later learned it was always intended as camp, leading to the domain-general lesson: 'Maybe I'm too quick to assume that other people are simpletons.'
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Think of a time you were wrong about something. What led you to that error? What domain-general lesson could you take away?
The author says 'knowing' a principle is different from internalizing it. Have you ever learned a bias intellectually but only truly understood it after experiencing it? How?
Consider a belief you hold strongly. How might you be misinterpreting evidence due to confirmation bias or recency bias?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- The Scout Mindset (Julia Galef)