đź’°In 1947, Bruner J. S. and Goodman C. C., two of the pioneers of cognitive psychology, asked a group of children to estimate the size of US coins from their memory. They found that poor children overestimated the coin size more than rich children did
👀 So they assumed that perception has objective and subjective elements: a person’s interpretation of a “reality” is shaped not only by the nature of the “reality” itself but also by the perceiver’s expectations, needs and desires: the so-called confirmation bias.
🗣️ When we act through our biases, we copy our long-ago conclusions and paste them in the current situation without realising that we are looking for evidence to support our findings rather than invalidate them. Instead of listening, we are just consolidating our pre-existing deductions, and if you are not listening, you are not entirely IN the conversation with all the ensuing consequences.
🎯Education and Perspective-taking: Engaging in activities that promote perspective-taking, such as considering experiences from the point of view of the person being stereotyped, and learning to slow down before making judgments, can help mitigate unconscious biases.
