Impact of Cognitive Biases on Research Process
Cognitive bias refers to in-built mistakes in persons’ thinking processes committed while processing data (Pereyra, 2000). Such mistakes make humans unable to form the correct view of reality despite the availability of all the data necessary to form such a view and all human thoughts are subject to systematic faults (Mineka, 1992).
Theories of Cognitive Biases
There have been formulated various theories which attempt to explain human cognitive biases.
The Fundamental Attribution Error Theory
According to this theory, cognitive biases result from human over reliance on inherent characteristics of a person to explain his/her behavior while failing to consider the situation in which the behavior took place (Mellers, Hertwig and Kahneman, 2001).
On the flip side, cognitive biases may also arise from placing too much reliance on the event situation in explaining behavior and failing to consider behavior associated characteristics of the person.
Therefore, according to the theory of fundamental attribution, cognitive errors can be avoided by considering both personality characteristics and the environment when explaining certain behavior. In the case of research, fundamental attribution error may be seen where a researcher attributes certain behavior of subjects to the environmental situation without considering their personality characteristics, and vice versa.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
The theory was advanced by Leon Festinger in 1957 and it relates to the association between the sets of knowledge in a person’s mind. According to this theory, people always strive to avoid cognitive dissonance, which is a conflict between cognitions held in mind (Nesse and Williams, 1998).
Thus, a person will try to avoid any piece of information from the environment which is inconsistent with his existing set of knowledge in order to reduce cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance has a great influence on research as researchers tend to select only that information that is consistent with their background knowledge.
Heuristics Theory
This theory is based on the notion of judgmental probability. In making decisions or judgments, people apply judgmental probability most of the time, failing to consider all the available pieces of data.
Application of judgmental probability in decision making may be attributed to the shortcomings of the mind’s information processing ability as well as the time limitations that individuals face (Nisbett and Ross, 1980). In research, a researcher may also apply judgmental probability in making conclusions instead of relying on all the available set of data relevant to the making of such conclusions.
Forms of Cognitive Biases and their Impact on Research
Anchoring
Anchoring involves relying on a single characteristic or piece of evidence to form a conclusion during the decision making process (Piatteli-Palmarini, 1994). This characteristic or piece of evidence acts as the point of reference for the decision being made. Anchoring leads to the disregard of other traits or pieces of evidence that may be relevant to the particular decision making situation.
Selective Perception
Selective perception relates to the researcher’s expectations. Before carrying out a research, a researcher usually has some expectations regarding the research outcomes (Pinker and Bloom, 1992). Therefore, while conducting the actual research, he/she may gather the information that supports the prior expectations disregarding other important information in the process. This obviously leads to inaccurate research results.
Information Bias
It refers to the inclination to search for data including that which has no relevance to the research. When gathering research data, researchers face the risk of gathering too much information on the research subject such that the objective of the research becomes obscured (Real, 1997).
To avoid information bias, therefore, it is necessary that a researcher gathers only that information that is relevant to the research topic and which helps to solve the research questions at hand.
Self-serving Bias
In real life, people are attracted to information that supports their interests and are more likely to discounts information that is contrary to their interests (Pinker, 1997).
For example, a researcher conducting a research on the relationship between smoking and lung cancer may be prejudiced to consider the information that connects smoking to lung cancer if he or she is a non-smoker. On the other hand, if the researcher is a cigarette smoker, he or she may choose those pieces of evidence which disassociate smoking from lung cancer.
Illusory Correlation
Sometimes researchers are led by personal bias to conclude that a relationship exists between variables where none exists. Such a conclusion is often based on inaccurate evidence and results from a prior belief by the researcher that an association exists between the variables under investigation (Ross and Sicoly, 1979).
Conclusion
Cognitive errors are real; they are usually the cause of inaccurate results in research. This form of errors is difficult for researchers to control since they are inherent in the mind of a researcher. Thus, they are systematic in nature. However, attempts should be made to reduce these errors during research mainly by applying scientific methods.
References
Mellers, B, Hertwig, R & Kahneman, D 2001, ‘Do frequency representations eliminate conjunction effects? An exercise in adversarial collaboration’, Psychological Science, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 269-275.
Mineka, S 1992, ‘Evolutionary memories, emotional processing, and the emotional disorders’, The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, vol. 28, pp. 161-206.
Nesse, RM & Williams, GC 1998, ‘Evolution and the origins of disease’, Scientific American, vol. 279, no. 5, pp. 86-93, <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nesse/Articles/Nesse-EvolMed-SciAmer-1998.pdf>.
Nisbett, RE & Ross, L 1980, Human inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Pereyra L 2000, “Function variation of the hazard management algorithm”, in the Human Behavior and Evolution Society Meeting, Amherst College.
Piattelli-Palmarini, M 1994, Inevitable illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds, Wiley, New York.
Pinker, S 1997, How the mind works, Norton, New York.
Pinker, S. & Bloom, P 1992, “Natural language and natural selection”, in J Barkow, L Cosmides, & J Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 451-493.
Real, L 1991, ‘Animal choice behavior and the evolution of cognitive architecture’, Science, vol. 253, no. 5023, pp. 980-986.
Ross, M & Sicoly, F 1979, ‘Egocentric biases in availability and attribution’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 322-336.