49. Bias (definition)
Group think is an example of a bigger collection of weird things that our brains do to help us make decisions quickly when we don’t have enough information or time or patience or intelligence. Basically, our brains sometimes make decisions for us so fast that we don’t even have time to realize that there was a decision at all. It’s like when you see those weird cakes that look exactly like a piece of fruit or something. Your brain just kinda decides that you’re looking at an apple. It happens so quickly that it would never occur to you to wonder if you’re looking at a cake. You’ve seen a million apples. You know what apples look like. It’s an apple.
What happens when someone cuts into it revealing a chocolatey, creamy, cake? Instead of feeling excited to eat chocolate cake, you feel something else – maybe amazement, betrayal, or nausea – because your brain was so convinced it was right that it’s hard to accept any new information, especially if that information proves that you were wrong all along. Every part of that experience happened unconsciously and automatically! That is, the decision that you were looking at an apple happened without you doing anything or even knowing that there was a decision at all. So did your rejection of the cake-ness of the apple-shaped cake.
Back to group think for a second. It makes us feel more comfortable with ideas just because the people around us have the same idea. It sometimes won’t even occur to us that the idea could be bad. We *all* think it’s an apple, so why waste time talking about it?
Another similar thing is that we *really* like information that what we already believe is 100% correct, and we *really* don’t like information that tells us something different. So, your friend, Aisha, might seem super smart to you because she says it’s an apple (which it obviously is), and your other friend, Alisha, might seem super annoying because she wonders if it might be one of those weird cakes that looks like stuff. The only reason that that Aisha seems so smart is that she agrees with you. You’ll soon learn that Alisha might actually know what she’s talking about.
There are lots (and LOTS) of examples of ways that our brains take shortcuts to help us make (sometimes completely wrong) decisions really fast and then make us feel OK about it. Collectively, these shortcuts are called “bias”. Sometimes it’s useful to refer to “unconscious bias” just to emphasize the fact that the shortcuts happen without us having any control or knowledge. Since unconscious bias is hard-wired into our brains, and it affects the way that we make decisions as individuals and groups, you can see why it matters for corporate governance.