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Come meander with me on the pathless path of the Heart
in these anecdotal,
sometimes inspiring, sometimes personal meanderings of the Heart's opening in the every-day-ness of life...

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

What's Your Bias? - Brian McLaren


People can't see what they can't see.
Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall,
trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion.
No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them,
unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias...


Confirmation Bias:  We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities.  As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn't fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer s simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It's almost impossible to see what our community doesn't, can't or won't see.

Complementary Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I'll be hostile to yours.  If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I'll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don't know how much (or little) we know because we don't know how much (or little) others know.  In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are.  As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can't be seen from where I am right now.  But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias:  I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false.  I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don't notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don't have intense and sustained personal contact with "the other", my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It's hard to see something when my way of making a living require me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.

Brian McLaren
from - Why Don't They Get It?  Overcoming Bias in Others.


With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo from the Internet



 

1 comment:

  1. Such deep thoughts here. I will need to re-read a few more times. I know I'm somewhere in there. (Actually I'm many places in there!)

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