Outsmart Your Brain: Thinking Past Cognitive Bias

On 10 May 1996, eight climbers were killed on Mount Everest while attempting to descend from the summit. A sudden blizzard hit them on the way down after summiting, making the 1996 Everest season the deadliest until an avalanche in 2014.

The blizzard also claimed the lives of Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, two extremely skilled team leaders with much experience on Everest. Climbing Everest is never easy, but the events of 1996 hold lessons on how events got out of control – human error and hubris combined with the extreme dangers of the mighty Himalayas.

In this tragedy, there are also lessons for business managers. Though it may never result in a tragic outcome, tackling the many cognitive biases inherent in all of us can greatly enhance our decision making. The Everest tragedy was arguably caused by several of these biases – and business decision makers can fall prey to them as well.

WHAT ARE COGNITIVE BIASES? As humans, we are limited in our ability to process information. Hence, we develop preconceived notions of how the world works – based on our upbringing, education, family background etc. These are what we call biases.

For example, one of the most harmful biases is that against gender – thinking that women are unsuited for leadership roles or that men cannot be good caregivers. But there are hundreds more biases that cause humans to make irrational decisions. These biases are part of our subjective reality, or our way of simplifying our worldview. These are what psychologists term ‘cognitive biases’.

Some of these biases are related to memory, or the way that we remember a certain event. It may be biased for a number of reasons and that, in turn, can lead to biased thinking and decision-making. Other cognitive biases are related to attention. Since attention is a limited resource, our brain has to be selective about what they pay attention to in the world around them.