Do You See What You Believe?

By: Leon Shivamber

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Teams that believe the same way will almost always be blind-sided by reality

Leon Shivamber
Look behind you. Are you sure you see what you believe?
Look behind you. Are you sure you see what you believe?

Or Believe What You See?

Children see what they believe

Like most kids her age, my teenage daughter loves the look of fast sports cars. She is particularly amused that she shares the same name with a Lotus sports car, Elise.

One morning recently, as I was driving her to the school bus stop, she excitedly pointed out the car in front of us. “Look dad, it’s an Elise.” Until then, she had only seen the car in magazines and online.

I gently pointed out that the car was not an Elise but a Corvette. But she was not to be deterred, as she insisted it was an Elise. That is until we pulled up next to the car, and she could see the Corvette badge.

Later I reflected on this incident and wondered what it was that made a teenager who had never seen (or had a live experience with) a Lotus Elise believe her mental image of the car more than the feedback from someone three times her age, who has seen (had an experience with) the vehicle in question.

Was it youthful self-confidence, or worse? And I wondered how often the same phenomena occurred in business settings.

Adults see what they believe

I have seen managers reviewing market data and disagreeing on potential opportunities. I have seen financial analysts who wanted to believe there was goodness to be found in data that suggested economic deterioration and went on to interpret the data in a favorable light. And I wondered, were these people seeing the same things?

I did not get very far with my exploration of these questions until I came across a piece written by Daniel Levitin:

The word pitch refers to the mental representation an organism has of the fundamental frequency of a sound. That is, pitch is a purely psychological phenomenon related to the frequency of vibrating air molecules. By “psychological,” I mean that it is entirely in our heads, not in the world-out-there; it is the end product of a chain of mental events that gives rise to an entirely subjective, internal mental representation or quality. Sound waves – molecules of air vibrating at various frequencies – do not themselves have pitch. Their motion and oscillations can be measured, but it takes a human (or animal) brain to map them to that internal quality we call pitch.

We perceive color in a similar way, and it was Isaac Newton who first realized this. (Newton, of course is known as the discoverer of the theory of gravity, and the inventor, along with Leibniz, of calculus. Like Einstein, Newton was a very poor student, and his teachers often complained of his inattentiveness.)

Newton was the first to point out that light is colorless, and that consequently color has to occur inside our brains.

Excerpts From This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin

Things like color and sound are not absolutes. People hear and see the same thing differently. Please Click To Tweet

In essence, Daniel says things like color and sound are not absolutes. People hear and see the same thing differently. Thus, some see a glass with some liquid and, focusing one way or the other, can see a half-empty or half-filled glass. Several people might be listening to the same CD but concentrating on different elements of the music and subsequently liking or disliking what they hear. They were seeing what they believed.

The business implication of seeing what you believe

In a business setting, the implications are stunning.

If everyone looking at your markets, customers, performance, and numbers believes the same way, and if they think there are no opportunities for alternate explanations, then you may be missing essential elements.

For example, you might look at data showing revenue growth and celebrating. However, you probably should not be happy if the growth is below the rest of the market or your targeted segments. You should also be unhappy if this growth came from lucky, unsustainable wins. The only happy distinction is if the change was fundamentally based on purposefully managed activities delivering better value to customers, and that is incredibly important to know.

Management teams that believe the same way that lack diversity of thought or avoid honest questioning of the facts will almost always be blind-sided by an alternate reality.

Management teams that believe the same way that lack diversity of thought or avoid honest questioning of the facts will almost always be blind-sided by an alternate reality. Please Click To Tweet

What about believing what you see?

Are there alternate realities or interpretations that can be inferred from the same set of facts? Absolutely!

Old Woman Optical Illusion - do you believe what you see?
Old Woman Optical Illusion – do you believe what you see?

Just examine the optical illusion above. Some people see the young girl, others an old lady. They are both present in the same set of facts. What you choose to see is a matter of where you are looking. You can only see both pictures when you shift your perspective, an activity that might serve you well in your business.

Believe in what you see?

There is an analogy to the challenge of seeing what you believe. It’s believing what you see phenomena.

When we moved from New York to Florida, we found in many discussions we would have with our friends everywhere that they also had a relative, friend, or someone close who had moved to Florida, sometimes even to our small town, or had just visited, or some other interesting relationship with Florida.

Florida rarely came up in conversations before.

Our move to Florida seems to be driving popularity in Florida since then.

When we moved to the UAE, the same thing happened again. Lots of people coincidentally knew someone with a UAE connection.

While we noticed an exciting increase in the visibility of the places we were moving to, it, in retrospect, should not have been that interesting.

The simple explanation is that our conversations naturally gravitated towards relationship overlaps as we moved to these places. We were not causing Florida or the UAE to become more popular. Indeed, they were not becoming more popular. We were merely having more conversations about them.

In believing what we see, we pay more attention to our experiences and give them far more statistical relevance because we see them than they should have.

Seeing what you believe is a bias

The bias of seeing what you believe is also known as confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is our tendency to favor information confirming our pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses. We do this in some interesting ways:

  • Selective looking: We tend to seek out and pay more attention to evidence that supports our existing beliefs and ignore or downplay evidence that contradicts our beliefs. For example, if you don’t believe climate change is real, you may selectively seek out information from sources that share your view and avoid those who disagree.
  • Biased interpretation: We interpret ambiguous or mixed evidence in a way that supports our preconceptions. For example, Trump and Biden supporters will interpret the events of January 6th in the best light for their political affiliations.
  • Seeking confirming cases: We tend to test our hypotheses one-sided by searching for evidence consistent with our current beliefs. Rather than looking at data neutrally, we ask questions and choose tests likely to confirm what we already think is true.
  • Recall bias: We are more likely to remember details consistent with our existing beliefs than details opposing those beliefs.
  • Irrational persistence: We cling to our beliefs even when the original evidence is discredited, or counterevidence arises. Rather than changing our minds, we seek further confirming evidence to justify our original views.

Confirmation bias arises because people naturally tend to preserve their existing views. Confirmation bias can reinforce mistaken beliefs and assumptions, even in the face of solid counterevidence.

Here is how that might play out in a business setting:

  • Selective looking: A manager observes an employee arriving late a few times and concludes they are lazy and irresponsible without looking at the employee’s overall attendance and performance records.
  • Biased interpretation: An executive sees a salesperson being very outgoing and loud on calls and assumes they must be effective at sales without looking at their actual sales data and performance metrics.
  • Seeking confirming cases: A hiring manager interviews a job candidate and gets a gut feeling that they would not be a good fit. So the manager selectively focuses on minor concerns in the interview as reasons not to hire them.
  • Recall bias: A project manager remembers several instances of an engineer missing deadlines and does not trust them to complete work on time, failing to accurately recall all the times the engineer delivered good work on schedule.
  • Irrational persistence: An analyst observes declining sales at a few stores and insists the overall retail chain is going bankrupt, ignoring financial data showing the chain continues to be profitable overall.

In these examples, business professionals draw biased conclusions based on limited or selective observations and seek out confirming evidence while ignoring contradicting information. Being aware of confirmation bias is critical to making objective decisions in business.

Believing what you see is a bias

Believing what you see, rather than considering the statistical occurrences, is an example of the availability heuristic bias.

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut where we make judgments about the probability of an event based on how easy it is to recall examples or instances of that event. If an event comes readily to mind, we tend to think it is more common than it truly is.

Some critical aspects of the availability heuristic:

  • Vivid or emotionally charged events are more memorable and tend to be perceived as more frequent than statistical evidence suggests. For example, a graphic news report about a plane crash may make flying seem scarier, even if statistics show flight is very safe.
  • Recent or personally experienced events are also more available. For example, if you just experienced a burglary, you will likely judge burglaries as more prevalent than overall crime data indicates.
  • Ease of imagination also plays a role. If you can easily imagine something happening, you will assume it happens more often. For example, people overestimate the rates of homicide and divorce partly because they are dramatic events that are easy to imagine occurring.
  • Salient events get disproportionate weight. Highly publicized or striking events grab our attention, leading us to overestimate their frequency and ignore relevant statistical data.

Relying solely on observable events without considering their statistical rarity leads to biased risk assessments and judgments.

Here is how availability heuristic bias might play out in a business setting:

  • A manager remembers the vivid details of an employee’s poor performance on a past project. When considering candidates for an important new project, the manager rejects the employee, citing their past failure despite their strong track record.
  • After a major data breach at a rival company, a CTO becomes highly concerned about hacking and overestimates how likely it is to occur, diverting disproportionate resources to cybersecurity compared to other IT risks.
  • A marketing director recalls several creative campaigns that went viral. When planning a new campaign, she assumes a wacky viral video will be the most effective strategy, underestimating the power of other approaches.
  • After a celebrity endorsement deal falls through, a sales executive assumes relying on celebrity spokespeople is too risky. He avoids all celebrity deals in the future, even though statistical evidence shows most are pretty successful.
  • Due to extensive media coverage of startup failures, an investor believes investing in startups is extremely risky despite data showing reasonable rates of return. They put too much money into established companies.
  • After local flooding, a warehouse manager over-spends on flood insurance and emergency preparedness, underestimating how rare major floods are in the region historically.

In each case, vivid memories or experiences influence judgments, leading to decisions that deviate from statistical realities. Being aware of this bias can help put experiences in proper perspective.

By recognizing this availability heuristic, we can make more informed judgments based on data rather than personal experiences or vivid events.

How do we reduce the business impact?

In every case, whether seeing what you believe (confirmation bias) or believing what you see (availability heuristic bias), the bias arises from personal experience.

Others who have not had the same personal experience are unlikely to have precisely the same biases about the same people, products, clients, events, etc.

The simplest way to overcome these biases is to embrace a diversity of perspectives. The people on your team with different experiences will likely provide a more balanced insight on any significant decision. That is if their views are embraced and accepted.

Leaders who surround themselves with a diverse team and embrace their feedback will more easily avoid the destructive impulse driven by biased interpretations of the world.

Embrace diversity of thought. It will make you a better decision-maker!

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3 thoughts on “Do You See What You Believe?”

  1. Interesting read – actually pretty deep and great food for thought. What we perceive even as absolutes – that is, empirical perceptions prior to conceptualization or rationalization can even be relative from person to person.

    Reply
  2. Completely agreed Leon!

    The current crisis has provided countless examples everywhere in the world. Wait a minute,… if it is true everywhere, isn’t it true for you and me too?

    Reply

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