CONFRONTING OUR BIASES

Have you heard of the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) to which we are all susceptible?

This means that we tend to identify with people who have similar outlooks as ourselves. My favourite experiment into how FAE works is a study into how Europeans honked their car horns. The experiment was incredibly simple.

A man and woman drove around Germany, France, Spain and Italy in a grey VW Beetle with

Australian insignia to distinguish the driver’s nationality. When they drove through the towns, they sat at the front of traffic lights and when the lights turned green, they didn’t move. The drivers then noted how long it took for the car behind to begin honking their horns.

The Italians proved most impatient, honking their horns on average, after about five seconds. Next were the Spanish at about the six second mark. The French came in at about seven seconds and the Germans proved most patient at about seven and a half seconds.

In the second stage of this experiment, the Australian insignia was swapped for a German one and the same behaviour of stopping at the traffic lights was repeated. This time, the Italians, Spanish and French all honked their horns much quicker (between three and four seconds). 

In Germany, however, the situation was quite different. Because they believed it was a fellow German, they were immediately more sympathetic and allowed them the longest amount of time before they began to sound their horn (eight seconds.) Something as simple as an insignia had affected the feelings of similarity (or dissimilarity) and had a significant impact on the time and the patience of drivers.

The danger this can represent when chasing high performance is that we don’t gather a wide range of feedback and take advantage of the cognitive diversity of others perspectives. 

Small groups of similar minds can easily only tell you what they think you want to hear.

It’s important to listen to a wide range of people around you, confront your biases and challenge your thinking.