Effects of personal characteristics, mental state and external factors on susceptibility to bias: a literature study
report
Cognitive biases and heuristics are pervasive simplifications and distortions in judgement and reasoning that systematically affect human decision making. Knowledge in this area may enable Defense to foresee and reduce detrimental effects of biases and to influence others more effectively. In a literature study we assessed the influence of personal characteristics (cognitive abilities, expertise, personality, cultural background), mental states (mood, emotions, stress, attention, expectations) and external factors (e.g., information availability, time constraints, physical discomfort) on the occurrence of cognitive biases. We found that each of the aforementioned factors can affect cognitive biases, though little is known about the effects of culture. Factors that appear to reduce a cognitive bias may in fact suppress or override its behavioral effect rather than preventing the bias from occurring at all. Bias susceptibility and the occurrence of biases depend on thinking style (heuristic versus analytical), where thinking style is associated with an individual’s personal characteristics, mental state and external factors. In general, biases are reduced when an analytical thinking style is applied. However, whether a specific thinking style reduces or enhances a given bias also depends on the context. Finally, we provide some results on debiasing techniques and link our findings to military practice.
Topics
TNO Identifier
573552
Publisher
TNO
Collation
47 p. (incl. appendices)
Place of publication
Soesterberg