Bias and Prejudice

BIAS AND PREJUDICE
BIAS
- A disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is
closed-minded or unfair.
- Can be innate or learned.
- People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, or a belief.
- The word appears to derive from Old French bias, "sideways, askance, against the grain."
- Whence comes French bias, "a slant, a slope, an oblique."
TYPES OF BIASES
 COGNITIVE BIAS
- Is a repeating or basic misstep in thinking, assessing, recollecting, or other cognitive
processes.
- inferences may be created unreasonably
- Lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly
called irrationality.
- a by-product of human processing limitations
 Anchoring
- Describes the propensity to rely on the first piece of information encountered when
making decisions.
- Example: If you first see a T-shirt that costs P200 – then see a second one that
costs P100 – you’re prone to see the second shirt as cheap. Whereas, if you’d
merely seen the second shirt, priced at P100, you’d probably not view it as cheap.
The anchor – the first price that you saw – unduly influenced your opinion.
 B. Apophenia
- Also known as pattern city or agent city, is the human tendency to perceive
meaningful patterns within random data. - One manifestation of this is known as the
"gambler's fallacy”
- Example: Gamblers may imagine that they see patterns in the numbers which
appear in lotteries, card games, or roulette wheels.
 C. Attribution Bias
- When judging others we tend to assume their actions are the result of internal
factors such as personality, whereas we tend to assume our own actions arise
because of the necessity of external circumstances.
- When judging others we tend to assume their actions are the result of internal
factors such as personality, whereas we tend to assume our own actions arise
because of the necessity of external circumstances.
- Example: A student who studies may explain her behavior by referencing situational
factors (e.g., "I have an exam coming up"), whereas others will explain her studying
by referencing dispositional factors (e.g., "She's ambitious and hardworking").
 D. Confirmation Bias
- the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that
confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses while giving disproportionately less attention to
information that contradicts it.
- Example: Imagine that a person holds a belief that left-handed people are more
creative than right-handed people. Whenever this person encounters a person that
is both left-handed and creative, they place greater importance on this "evidence"
that supports what they already believe.
 E. Framing
- Involves the social construction of social phenomena by mass media sources,
political or social movements, political leaders.
- It is an influence over how people organize, perceive, and communicate about
reality.
 F. Cultural Bias
- Related phenomenon of interpreting and judging phenomena by standards inherent
to one's own culture.
- Concerns cultural norms for color, location of body parts, mate selection.
 G. Halo Effect
- An observer's overall impression of a person, organization, brand, or product
influences their feelings about specifics of that entity's character or properties.
 H. Self-serving Bias
- The tendency for cognitive or perceptual processes to be distorted by the
individual's need to maintain and enhance self-esteem.
- Credit accomplishment to our own capacities and endeavors, yet attribute failure to
outside factors.
 I. Status quo Bias

- Is an emotional bias; a preference for the current state of affairs. The current
baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that
baseline is perceived as a loss.
 CONFLICTS OF INTERESTS
- When a person or association has intersecting interests (financial, personal, etc.) which
could potentially corrupt.
- Set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgment or actions regarding a
primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest.
 A. Bribery
- Is giving of money, goods or other forms of recompense to in order to influence the
recipient's behavior.
- Include money (including tips), goods, and rights in action, property, privilege,
emolument, and gifts.
 B. Favoritism
- Sometimes known as in group favoritism, or in-group bias, refers to a pattern of
favoring members of one's in-group over out group members.
 Nepotism is favoritism granted to relatives
 C. Lobbying
- The attempt to influence choices made by administrators, frequently lawmakers or
individuals from administrative agencies.
- People with inordinate socioeconomic power are corrupting the law in order to serve
their own interests.
- A way to influence the lawmaking process by convincing the lawmakers to vote as
you want them to
 Lobbyist: a person who tries to influence lawmakers.
 D. Regulatory Issues
- A form of political corruption that can occur when a regulatory agency, created to act
in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of
special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with
regulating.
 E. Shilling
- is deliberately giving spectators the feeling that one is an energetic autonomous
client of a vendor for whom one is working
 STATISCAL BIASES
- Is a systematic tendency in the process of data collection, which results in lopsided,
misleading results.
- Can occur in any of a number of ways, in the way the sample is selected, or in the way
data are collected.
 A. Forecast Bias
- Is when there are consistent differences between results and the forecasts of those
quantities; that is: forecasts may have an overall tendency to be too high or too low.
 B. Observer-expectancy Effect
- When a researcher's expectations cause them to subconsciously influence the
people participating in an experiment. Usually controlled by double-blind system.

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BIAS AND PREJUDICE

 I. Status quo Bias

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