My method is to identify them and then actively expose myself to imagery and stories that counter those biases to reduce my undesirable intuitive responses to things. You train your intuition by reinforcement with good examples and counterexamples -- like training anything, you get more intuition about how to do things by seeing good and bad examples. I'm using intuition to mean the thinking that goes on before you're narrative gets a hold of it.
Don't see why implicit biases should be any harder to combat than any other bias you see in a scientific field, and scientists all have to learn and work hard to combat them to avoid results that don't hold up to scrutiny. I assume engineers are similar, you probably have bad habits coming in or poor intuition about how things should fit together. By example and practice you train your intuition to align with reality.
Actually test your bias objectively and receive feedback.
EX1: If you only add people to your team that pass your interview process you never test if it’s actually effective.
If you replace that with say a score card to rate people on various metrics then compare actual preformace with your metrics then you have some feedback to improve the system.
EX2: For a one time event like a music / art / writing contest. Remove the bias inducing elements by just judging the output.
Many people do higher hundreds of people. Finding good metrics for each job is harder, but large organizations with reasonable turnover can have a lot of data to work with.
That may or may not carry-over to more complex processes.
I don’t think they do. We really have very limited control over it. But I think that, just like you can become a professional athlete in just one sport (as opposed to many sports), you could also become very good at avoiding a specific type of bias.
Comments
Serious question,
Is there any alternative theory or method about how to avoid systematic bias other than being aware of systematic bias?
Also comment, I think the studies of awareness bias involved very simple phenomena. That may or may not carry-over to more complex processes.
My method is to identify them and then actively expose myself to imagery and stories that counter those biases to reduce my undesirable intuitive responses to things. You train your intuition by reinforcement with good examples and counterexamples -- like training anything, you get more intuition about how to do things by seeing good and bad examples. I'm using intuition to mean the thinking that goes on before you're narrative gets a hold of it.
Don't see why implicit biases should be any harder to combat than any other bias you see in a scientific field, and scientists all have to learn and work hard to combat them to avoid results that don't hold up to scrutiny. I assume engineers are similar, you probably have bad habits coming in or poor intuition about how things should fit together. By example and practice you train your intuition to align with reality.
Actually test your bias objectively and receive feedback.
EX1: If you only add people to your team that pass your interview process you never test if it’s actually effective.
If you replace that with say a score card to rate people on various metrics then compare actual preformace with your metrics then you have some feedback to improve the system.
EX2: For a one time event like a music / art / writing contest. Remove the bias inducing elements by just judging the output.
You would have to hire hundreds before the things that hiring processes can't test for get smoothed out.
Many people do higher hundreds of people. Finding good metrics for each job is harder, but large organizations with reasonable turnover can have a lot of data to work with.
You can't do this in respect of every level of metacognition, so this loops back to you needing to be aware of an issue prior to testing for it.
I don’t think they do. We really have very limited control over it. But I think that, just like you can become a professional athlete in just one sport (as opposed to many sports), you could also become very good at avoiding a specific type of bias.
practicing actually avoiding it..
one can be aware but still not listen to the 'voice of objectivity' -
personal preferences very often override morals/ethics/etc, and we are very good at rationalizing.
Continuous introspection and extrospection.