#129
Project Objectives:
Purpose: The purpose of this project is to learn or review basic research methods and present a well-organized, well-researched speech on any topic.
Overview: Select a topic that you are not already familiar with or that you wish to learn more about.
For this speech, I used dual monitors to show the presentation slides.
Script:
I'm sure you all must have faced this at some point or the other. Picture this - You're sitting on your couch with your close friend watching a cricket match. The bowler bowls and the batsman takes a small step forward before hitting the ball. At that fraction of a moment you're thinking to yourself - oh no this could be a mistake he might get bowled out why would he even try something like this it's too risky.
The batsman swings his bat hard and voila! it's a sixer! Immediately you turn to your friend and say i knew it! I knew it was going to be a six this ball.
Your friend casually looks towards you with a poker face. Why?
Because he knows that if you really had known this for a fact you would've predicted it before he made the shot.
Fellow toastmasters and guests, today I’m here to give you a glimpse into the world of psychology. I am always interested in knowing why humans behave the way they do. We succumb to cognitive biases and we hold intrinsic beliefs about various things we believe we don't have and only others do.
What you witnessed above is nothing but the hindsight bias - also known as the "i-knew-it-all-along" phenomenon.
Consider this - your friend got an acceptance into one college and his mom says ah i knew you were going to get in. But actually she had spoken to his dad last week how much she was worried and that she doubted whether he would get in anywhere at all.
In September 2012 psychologists Neal Roese of Kellogg School and Kathleen Vohs from Carlson School researched on this phenomenon and found that humans selectively recall information that confirms what they know to be true and then create a story around it such that it makes sense. While this motivates us to promote a positive view of ourselves, it gets in the way of learning from our experiences. Neal Roese says “If you feel like you knew it all along, it means you won’t stop and examine why something really happened. You can become overconfident about your judgments leading to bad decisions."
Let's look at another bias:
Someone walks up to you and says: "hey! Want to become a billionaire? Just drop out of college and start a company!"
It worked for Zuckerberg, it worked for Gates, it worked for Musk so it should work for you too, right?
Wrong. Those are just 3 examples among a thousand others that we don't even know about. The media discloses only the wins not the losses so we’re exposed only to the success stories.
This is survivorship bias. It is a type of sample selection bias that occurs when a data set considers only the “surviving” observations and shields us from the rest.
so to avoid this, am I suggesting you to be pessimistic and stop dreaming of a billionaire lifestyle?
No.
Pick up a challenging but realistic goal and give it your best shot.
But be aware that the available anecdotes will be a glorified version that considers only the rare survivors.
While Elon Musk may be working 100 hours a week, you need to find out what works for you.
Similarly, we are susceptible to so many biases that are inherent within us - for instance - the anchoring effect. It means when we have a base value our brains will automatically compare it with that number. That's how you get 2 different opinions when looking at the same price.
There's another theory called confirmation bias - researchers define it as the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs.
It looks something like this - <ns> You have a theory and you find one small shred of evidence that supports it. So you choose to go ahead with that instead of the majority of information which actually disproves your theory.
Confirmation bias is as though whatever you read and come across says may the force be with you and it supports you wholeheartedly in whatever you choose to believe.
If you see here, some of us may relate because we might have faced something like this right someone tells you about one particular thing on one day and suddenly you feel like that’s all you see everywhere.
Now that we are aware that we have these intrinsic biases, what can we do?
Psychologists recommend the following:
One, we should stop and think of an explanation for those things that didn’t happen but could have happened
Two, we shouldn’t throw out information that doesn’t fit with our story. It’ll help us consider all perspectives.
Three, as i mentioned earlier don’t simply try to confirm what you did by dismissing reason. Try to observe your actions like an objective third-party and last, and this is something i have tried and tested so i can tell you helps - maintain a decision journal. This would help you compare what all you thought before and what actually happened.
Now it’s not like if you follow the above steps you’ll magically get rid of your biases. No.
But it will help you understand yourself better and hopefully improve your future decisions. There’s absolutely no need for you to doubt your abilities because of this. After all, we are humans.
Thank you. Over to you TMOD.
Evaluation:
- Interesting topic
- Usually people talk about food, you chose something unique
- Good research, you provided stats
- Visual aid with ppt to substantiate your points
- Recommendations:
- Your speech could be organized better
- Examples were random
- Could've started with common examples
- Could use more hand gestures
Ah counter - 5 'like's, could prepare better next time to avoid these fillers
'Citation' is important - I read this here, or I found this on this website
Video:
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