Human perception
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Social psychology and cognitive biases.
Group Biases
Narcissists tend to emerge as leaders of leaderless groups.[1] Initially, groups tend to perceive these narcissistic leaders positively, even when they are negatively impacting performance.[2] However, these perceptions generally shift to match actual performance over time.[3]
Strategy and Decision-Making Biases
Affective Errors
Tendency to make decisions based on what we wish is true.
Applies to folks we like, which can affect the quality of our judgement. Brooke Harrington's research on investment clubs showed clubs formed primarily through professional bonds — as opposed to social ones — earned higher returns. “One of the things that can torpedo group performance is when people are too socially enmeshed with one another. They can become reluctant to really be direct and honest with one another.”
Attribution Bias
When trying to make sense of the world, we are prone to overemphasizing certain things at the expense of others. For example, we are more likely to attribute behavior to disposition ("This is who they are") than to situation ("This is what was going on"). This is known as Fundamental Attribution Error.
Another example is false consensus effect, where we overestimate how widely our views are shared with others. This is a form of representativeness bias (the presumption that people or events share the features of other members in that category). Said another way, it's The Majority Illusion. Another example is the Abilene Paradox.
You can leverage this effect to get people's true opinions. If you ask someone what they think about something, they have an incentive to say what they think you want to hear. If, however, you ask them, "What do you think others think?", it's likely that you'll get a good picture of what they think, thanks to these attribution biases.
Availability Heuristic
If you can recall it, it must be important.
Bias towards information or actions you can more easily recall (such as recent news or things with major consequences).
Confirmation Bias
Our tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms our preexisting beliefs.
One example of this is the backfire effect, where people's strongly-held beliefs get even stronger when presented with evidence that contradicts those beliefs. This comic describes this effect beautifully.
Curse of Knowledge
We assume that others know as much as we do. This may result in:
- Lack of empathy
- Over-explaining. In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath suggest that the Curse of Knowledge is why we're so bad at storytelling.
Hindsight Bias
Also known as the "knew-it-all-along" effect. Hindsight is 20/20.
What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI)
(Show pie graph as counter to this.)
Ed Batista's "Seeing what's not there (The importance of missing data)."
Survivorship Bias
Focusing on things that succeeded, while ignoring things that failed. Another corollary to "correlation ≠ causation."
Said another way:
Be wary of extrapolating from positive deviance!
Gender Bias
Perception of Dominance
- Melissa J. Williams, Tiedens, Larissa Z. Tiedens. "The subtle suspension of backlash: A meta-analysis of penalties for women’s implicit and explicit dominance behavior." Psychological Bulletin, Vol 142(2), Feb 2016, 165-197. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000039
References
- ↑ Amy B. Brunell, William A. Gentry, W. Keith Campbell, Brian J. Hoffman, Karl W. Kuhnert, and Kenneth G. DeMarree. "Leader Emergence: The Case of the Narcissistic Leader." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (October 2, 2008)
- ↑ Barbora Nevicka, Femke S. Ten Velden, Annebel H. B. De Hoogh, and Annelies E. M. Van Vianen. "Reality at Odds With Perceptions: Narcissistic Leaders and Group Performance." Psychological Science (September 19, 2011)
- ↑ Paulhus, D. L. (1998). "Interpersonal and intrapsychic adaptiveness of trait self-enhancement: A mixed blessing?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1197-1208.
