David Dylan Thomas Discusses Cognitive Biases And How We Can Minimise Their Impact

Content strategist David Dylan Thomas discusses various cognitive biases using real-world examples and explains how we can minimise their impact – or use them for good

- Oliver Lindberg

David Dylan Thomas, a content strategist at Philadelphia-based experience design firm Think Company, first discovered his interest in cognitive biases when he saw Harvard professor Iris Bohnet give a talk called ‘Gender Equality by Design’ (netm.ag/bohnet) at South by Southwest in 2016.

“It was the first time I really saw the connection between hiring bias – around gender and race – and pattern recognition,” he says. “Iris explained that this bias doesn’t always come from someone who is overtly sexist or racist but from people who have seen the same pattern all their lives. They almost can’t help but keep thinking in this pattern when they decide to hire somebody. It’s just stuck in their head. When I learned that something as evil as racial or sexual bias could be boiled down to something as simple as pattern recognition, I decided I needed to learn everything I could about cognitive bias.”

Thomas defines cognitive bias as a series of shortcuts our minds take to get through the day. “Even right now, I’m making decisions about the tone of my voice, how to sit or what I should look at,” he explains. “If I thought carefully about each one of those decisions, I would never get anything done. So most of the time our minds are on autopilot, which is a good thing, but every now and then these shortcuts can lead to errors we call cognitive biases.”