5 types of bias that I think our team might experience are Confirmation bias, Anchoring bias, Either/ Or bias, Survivorship bias, and Progress bias(Timely blog, 2022).
Confirmation bias is in simple terms, only looking at the evidence or data that supports one’s plans or beliefs(Timely blog, 2022). People have an instinctive inclination to do what makes them feel good, so they often only listen to or respect the data that aligns with their own viewpoints. I believe confirmation bias can impact our ISP team because we all have our own therapy experiences, whether we heard it from a friend, or teacher, or took it ourselves. So I believe there is a possibility that our team tries to make questions that only cater to their experience of therapy regardless of what it actually is since we are making a mini-therapy project for our ISP. I intend to overcome this by taking questions from all of my team members and compiling them with a random number generator so all of us have can have equal questions according to our perspectives.
Either/Or bias is the logical fallacy that only two options can be chosen and there is only one right between them(Smith &Lewis, 2022). The major problem with this bias is that it automatically assumes that the one that is not chosen is the “wrong” choice which is not true. Our team may be impacted by this bias because of us choosing what type of game our ISP should be. Doing so we have already rejected any idea of the project not being a game which I intend to overcome by looking at the broader picture of the project which is to help people with mental health instead of being in a “rabbit hole”.
Progress Bias is the bias of overstating our positive actions while downplaying our negative ones(Timely blog, 2022). This is basically when we only look at the good side of things to make something look better than it is. I believe that our team might be impacted by this because of the strict schedule that we have which we are following without taking a step back and looking at the cons. This is a problem because we might think everything is going well just because the schedule is getting followed but might forget to question the schedule itself. I personally intend to overcome this by having a small talk with my team every week and reflecting on what we have done and how we could have done it better.
Survivorship Bias is doing something the same way as someone else who was successful(Timely blog, 2022). I personally don’t think there is too much that is wrong with this bias since we should always take tips and tricks from people who have done it or can do it better than others. I believe that our team might have been impacted by this bias because the reason why we took the idea of a mini therapy is that it is known that therapy helps with mental health. I believe we have overcome it because we didn't just make up an idea for this game based on previous success but have brainstormed other ideas from which this came on top.
Anchoring Bias is being overly influenced by the first piece of data or information we get(Timely blog, 2022). The best example of this is the saying “first impressions are the most important”. People are heavily influenced by the first perspective they have on other people. Our team may be impacted by this bias by picking questions that first pop up in our heads. This might be the case for various reasons like trying to finish the project quicker or because of anchoring bias. I intend to overcome this bias by using logic when comparing two solutions and questions instead of going off of an order. Also now that our team knows what anchoring bias is, we can check each other for anchoring bias if one of us falls for it.
Further evaluation from the podcast :
From the podcast, I learned about a bunch of ways people try to correct themselves when they know their plan is going to fail. Some of them are the Wrecking ball Phenomenon and Tightrope walking. The wrecking ball phenomenon is essentially overcorrecting and getting rid of all the good things that were done while doing the project which is thought to be failing(Smith &Lewis, 2022). Tightrope walking is when you cannot figure out which option you want to choose so they do a bit of both. This is a slower but stable process rather than a wrecking ball phenomenon(Smith &Lewis, 2022).