The idea of bias is associated with twisting something to one side.
Bias comes from bias , a verb that refers to twisting or traversing something to one of its sides . The term, therefore, is used to talk about something twisted, cut or positioned obliquely .
The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) defines bias as the obliquity or twisting of a thing towards one side . The concept is also used in a symbolic sense to mention a tendency or inclination .
For example: “The measures announced by the governor have an undeniable authoritarian bias,” “His thinking reflects a fascist bias that he surely acquired during his time in the army,” “The film has a homosexual bias that made it very popular among the community.” “gay.”
The concept in psychology and statistics
The notion of bias is widely used in psychology . A cognitive bias is a particular characteristic of a subject that affects the processing of information and forms what is known as cognitive prejudice (the type of distortion that affects the way of perceiving reality).
Retrospective bias is that which consists of modifying, once an event has occurred, the memory of the previous opinion in favor of the final result. False consensus bias , on the other hand, occurs when a person assumes that their own opinions and beliefs are supported or shared by the majority.
In the field of statistics , statistical bias is an error that is detected in the results of a study and is due to factors in the collection, analysis, interpretation or review of the data .
The optimistic bias
Tali Sharot, Doctor in Psychology and Neuroscience born in Israel, is the author of a book called " The Optimistic Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain ", whose main theme revolves around a premise: human beings are optimistic by nature. .
Psychology has studied the optimistic bias.
People tend to anticipate events, often predicting positive outcomes, thanks to our ability to imagine the future . Generally, we think that what will come will be better than it actually will be, partly as a consequence of our selective memory , which tries to hide bad experiences, to pretend that they did not happen. It is known that our emotions modify memories, especially traumatic ones, and it is with those same tools that we construct scenes not yet experienced.
On the other hand, there is a phenomenon that could be called a self-fulfilling prophecy : when we face a challenge that we want to overcome successfully, we tend to motivate ourselves more than usual and dedicate all our energies, which increases the chances of achieving our goals.
The importance of optimism
We are all susceptible to optimism bias, and this could be exploited to improve the results of certain campaigns, such as those that promote smoking cessation; If cigarette wrappers announced that 80% of people who intend to quit tobacco do so in just two weeks , instead of remembering that it is a product that is harmful to health , people's optimism would surely skyrocket. more than one smoker, who would join the proposal to abandon the habit once and for all. Faced with the threat of disease, however, a mechanism is awakened that makes the risks less valid, based on the cases of those two or three people who aged without problems despite leading unhealthy lives.
Optimism bias doesn't just affect us individually; When, for example, large groups of financial analysts, investors and government officials place excessive confidence in the same decision, polarization may occur, or attention on two specific points, ignoring the rest of the possibilities. In the event of a bad forecast, optimism becomes the path to certain failure.