Cognitive bias in decision making

Economics

My main cognitive shortfall that I suffer from is my-confirmation, perhaps otherwise called naive realism.

What this means is that I always consider myself to be correct even when I am not, but I do not know that I am not, because all evidence seems to point to that which I am indoctrinated in or have been brought up to believe.

Naive realism is slightly different to my-confirmation in that it asserts that what I do is right and good and wise and correct, but others are perpetrating errors and irrationalizaitons.

I see my deeds and thoughts as making 100% sense. It is others who make no sense.

Both my-confirmation and naive realism are similar in that even wen evidence is brought to show that I have erred and the other may be more correct than I, I tend to see the evidence as lying in my favor.

Interestingly, studies have shown that even when shown a neutral piece of evidence, two opposing political parties with contradictory political perspectives tend to see the situation as corroborating their beliefs.

I have chosen my-confirmation as the primary cognitive shortfall that I suffer from- since I perceive this shortfall as underplaying my key errors in life on all scales.

I, a s do all others, want to succeed in life and make the most of it. Yet it is difficult to do so when my brain is embedded and embodied.

I see my brain as being embedded by the fact that it is 'embedded' with certain cognitive heuristics that compell me to think in a certain way, key amongst these my-confirmation (or naive realism) that impels me to accept certain indoctrination fallacies as true even though they not be.

Secondly, I see my brain as being embodied in that I have been brought up in a certain culture, amongst a certain way of living. I have ipso facto swallowed many of the time and culture-bound teachings that I have been indoctrinated with and some of these teachings may be harmful to me.

I know that supposedly all cultures may be relatively true, a t least according to post-modernism (namely to writers such as Foucault or feyerbrand), in that each has its own reality. Putting that aside (and I am skeptical about that believing in a correspondence type of truth), I look at the pragmatic value of teachings and think that some cultural teachings may be more self- and socially-destructive than others.

When reading memoirs of terrorists for instance, I have often found that many terrorists fervently believe in what they are doing and think it beneficial for their soul. They have been brought up in a culture -- such as in Korea, or in the former Soviet Russia, and consider themselves the truly knowing person, and the other who has been duped.

This reminds me too of memoirs that I have read of people suffering from bipolar or who have been declared insane. Oftentimes, these patients, particularly the latter consider themselves 'normal' and surrounding people to be abnormal. The question then is one that hinges on the definition of abnormality. A person in one society may be considered 'normal'; in another society this 'well-functioning', 'normal' person may be rated an outcast and considered 'aborning'. The problem it seems to me comes about when the person is following customs and norms that his society considers 'normal" but that are mutilating to mental, psychological, social or physical health of person.,

Many think that this is particular to a so-called fundamentalist or brainwashed country such as North Korea or an Islamic society such as Saudi Arabia.

I, however, see the same pattern in Western society.

A book, for instance, that I was recently reading (Flanagan, 2012) noted the immensity of people that were harmed by following so-called progressive notions of their day. This was America in the 1970s. People allowed their daughters to freely explore sex in all its minutes under the influence of contemporaneous scholars such as Spock, Freud, and others. Daughters killed and ruined themselves.