Researchers have the primary responsibility of shedding light on the unseen, but the hurdle for them is bias. Here is why they need to understand the Systems 1 thinking that is instantaneous and often emotional to overcome the challenge.
Humans believe that with vision and eyesight, they can see things around them. But many things go unnoticed or are noticed in a particular way because of how the brain is wired.
Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking Fast and Slow”, discusses two kinds of thinking processes. Systems 1 way of thinking is automatic and near-instantaneous, which can result in an emotional response. For example, if a person is stressed and orders a dessert. While ordering, if they have an option between an 80 percent fat-free dessert and a 40 percent fat-free dessert, the person will automatically choose the 80 percent fat-free one.
Compared to Systems 1, Systems 2 thinking is slow and involves attention and effort. For the same example, when one deploys Systems 2 thinking, the person would even think if they need a dessert at all at the point in time, if it is healthy, or if they are yielding to emotions.
In research, the primary responsibility of a researcher is to shed light on the unseen. Often, researchers are caught in their own biases. After all, they are humans and are prone to Systems 1 thinking.
It can lead to biases like – confirmation bias, the tendency of people to favor one’s beliefs or availability bias, easy-to-think and recall from memory or recency bias, and the tendency to let recent events influence our decisions.
Here are a few tips for researchers who play a critical role in making the unseen seen:
- Manage overconfidence about estimates or views that you may carry.
- Seek views from others and validate your thoughts.
- Base your decisions on facts and not on intuition.
- Connect with socially dissimilar groups of people and be open to their views.
- Always take inside-out and outside-in views
- Be aware of your own biases and act on them.
Researchers carry the responsibility of collaborating with a diverse set of people, producing quality research outcomes, and communicating them efficiently to the outside world. They must invest time and effort to understand how the human thinking process works and act on it to deliver insights of greater credibility, discernment, and power to impact society.
