Bias Is Built Into Our Brains. But There’s Still Hope.
Human beings are simplifiers. We are cognitive misers, exerting the least amount of mental effort that we can in making decisions. We rely on heuristics, or mental shortcuts, to take the fastest route from A to B. And we are categorizers.
The tendency to conceive of the world around us in categories is a strategy that is often adaptive, but has at least one unfortunate byproduct: the bias that results from associations we make with different categories. And while there is no getting rid of bias, we can design systems to correct for these errors.
Categorizing is critical to survival. It enables you to efficiently move through the world, managing the stream of stimuli that you encounter from millisecond to millisecond. It allows you to be comfortable handing a letter to the mail carrier and be assured that the supermarket clerk will give back your credit card after you’ve paid for your groceries.
All humans are predisposed to sort the world around them into categories. You quickly assign the empty, unlit alley as “risky” and the bustling, well-lit sidewalk as “likely safe.” You see a moldy apple and have no trouble labeling it “not good to eat.”
