3.2 Cognitive Biases
3.2.4 Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is present when an individual wish to ratify their opinions by unknowingly finding and applying proof when making decisions (Montibeller andWinterfeldt, 2015). For example, many people consult while wanting to make imperative choices like depending on consultants for assistance with projecting or approximating the possibilities of various forthcoming results. Farmers depend on whether foretellers to assess the rain while business experts use sales predictions to provide the means of achieving the sales targets (Stavrova and Evans, 2019) Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias which involves favouring or literally confirming a pre-
61 existent belief. For instance, a person might be holding a belief that all rude kids are smart academically, if it happens that this person meets a lid that is both rude and smart academically, he or she will tend to place more weight on this kind of proof, following the fact that it proves his or her belief. This individual will be prompted to look for more evidence that supports this line of thought and disregards all the evidence that does not support his or her idea. This type of cognitive bias has an impact on individuals’ mode of information collection, interpretation and recalling. For instance, the people who are in support of a certain idea will be collecting information in a way that only supports their belief. Such people will also interpret information reaching them in a manner that their already existent ideas will be upheld (Cherry, 2018). The aforementioned further impacts how they recall the details of information using an approach that provides reinforcement to their already existing beliefs.
Human beings tend to be more inclined to search for information that will support the ideas that they already believe (Preston,2012). In turn, the above-described trend in reasoning hinders their objectivity when looking at imminent scenarios. In the end, the decision-making capacities of individuals are affected by the subjective view that leads to biased conclusions. In mega projects, such biased could lead to unexpected outcomes as the actual situation on the ground is considered in the context of a bias.
This research notes that the confirmation bias may affect decisions related to cost overrun resulting from poor projects. In addition, the above bias is also linked to personality traits amongst project managers, CEOs and key stakeholders in
Megaprojects. An instance of confirmation bias is when people have to choose to whom to vote in an election. With confirmation bias, these people will tend to first have a favorite candidate and then begin looking for the positive aspects of such a candidate to
62 justify their choice to vote for them. Similarly, they will be biased towards looking for defects that their non-favorite candidate so as to satisfy their choice of not voting for them. Similarly, previous experiences of individuals involved in decision-making may impact how they interact with new scenarios and challenges involved in executing operations of mega projects. The predisposition happens when there is a craving to affirm one's conviction, prompting oblivious selectivity in the procurement and utilization of proof. To alleviate this bias, individuals are advised to adopt multiple perspectives about their queries or suppositions. Further, the bias can be eliminated by challenging likelihood evaluations with counterfactual and conduct tests to determine whether alternative hypotheses can be pursued.
Confirmation bias is one of the kinds of cognitive biases which involves favouring or literally confirming a pre-existent belief. According to Preston (2012), confirmation bias has an impact on individuals’ mode of information collection, interpretation and recalling. For instance, the people who are in support of a certain idea will be collecting information in a way that only supports their belief. Such people will also interpret information reaching them in a manner that their already existent ideas will be upheld (Cherry, 2018). This further impact how they recall the details of information using an approach that provides reinforcement to their already existing beliefs.
Even though the above description depicts confirmation bias in a negative light with regard to decision-making in megaprojects; Sanderson(2010) points out the positive side of confirmation bias that it is useful in the formation and re-confirmation of the stereotypes that people have about events and other people. The aforementioned could be useful at times, however, in this investigation confirmation bias is viewed in the context of faulty decision-making in mega projects. Therefore, the discussion will focus on the
63 avenues through which confirmation bias affects project managers’ view of risk, escalating costs, and other aspects that pose a threat to the success of mega projects.
Chrysikou (2016) carried out a study that focused on the impact of verbal and pictorial approaches in exemplifying divergent and creative thinking. In the study, the researcher carried out an examination of the retrieval of memory of a person based on both the influence of verbal and pictorial stimuli (Chrysikou,2016). The aim was to examine whether there existed differential bias on the participants' responses. From the task assigned to participants, Chrysikou (2016) was able to systematically manipulate the extent to which participants are were issued with open or closed questions. On completion of the task, Chrysikou (2016) observed that participants, depending on the nature of the task undertaken, demonstrated different biases toward top-down or bottom-up semantic retrieval strategies. Specifically, Chrysikou (2016) observed that the generation of canonical uses occurred in a faster manner compared to secondary and ad hoc uses.
Secondly, Chrysikou (2016) showed that even though more top-down strategies were employed by the participants as compared to the bottom-up retrieval strategies, the creative tasks that were open-ended and that involved the generation of secondary and ad hoc thinking had the participants generating responses that were based on the bottom-up retrieval strategies. Thirdly, Chrysikou (2016) observed that effects of stimulus type (name, picture, or a combination of the two) on the availability of object properties for retrieval was more noticeable at the time of the generation of ad hoc, uncommon uses.
Actor-observer bias is such that there are two parties, the observer and the actor (Kahneman, 2011). Specifically, it occurs whereby a party (observer) attributes the actor’s failures to internal sources and his or hers to external forces. Further, it is obvious that the actor-observer bias is sometimes an issue and so problematic. This follows the
64 fact that it can even lead to unnecessary arguments. With regard to decision making, this type of cognitive bias has a negative impact because the actor cannot seek to correct the negativities occurring to him/her and can at times attribute them to external factors that are even out of control, even when the actual reason for the negativities are majorly internal (Chrysikou,2016). When individuals are faced with a situation that requires the making of an important decision, individuals tend to attempt to explore all the possible options that may be available to them. But how often individuals pursue all the options available for them? As much as individuals would always like to explore all the options available to them, most times they do not exhaust them. As a result, their attention shifts to the few options that they can think about and eventually they leave out other available options. The above-described scenario is known as an attentional bias which is another cognitive bias included in this research even though it is not measured statistically (Chrysikou,2016).
The tendency of individuals to pay more attention to negative stimuli as compared to positive or neutral stimuli is a key feature of attentional bias. Over time, the bias has been attributed to evolutionary mechanisms to aid in survival. Specifically, Cherry (2019) states that “in order to ensure survival, our ancestors were more likely to survive if they paid greater attention to risky things in the environment and ignored things that did not pose a threat.” Attentional bias has an unimaginable impact on the decision-making process; thus, its inclusion in this investigation. This cognitive bias can lead to faulty and erroneous decisions by project managers in charge of Megaprojects. The misinformation effect is a bias that occurs when reporting an event later after the event has taken place.
There is always a tendency of putting forth information in a manner that is not accurate as it occurred. While trying to pass information an individual might add subtle details to
65 the details in an attempt to explain it better depending on how one can remember such information. The post-event information has a great tendency of interfering with the original memory of the event. Thus, there is a confusion between the verbal description of the events that the informer is reporting with the visual experience gained when the event takes place (Arndt, 2012). Brent (2018) states that “the misinformation effect refers to the impairment in memory for the past that arises after exposure to misleading information." Misinformation effect has a huge negative impact on the decision-making process. The effect leads to eventual false information reaching each and every person in the chain of information. If the information is used to make a decision, one would definitely reach a misinformed decision. Sarah (2018) explains the misinformation effect using a study carried out by Loftus long ago. The classic experiment dated back to 1974 where the researcher conducted interviews on a number of participants (Sarah,2018). The participants viewed a video of an accident involving two cars. They were later on questioned on what the saw on the particular video. Depending on the wording of the questions and other factors, the answers to the questions did vary (Sarah,2018). When the student asked the question, “how fast were the cars moving just before they smashed on each other?” most of the answers would suggest that the cars were moving with extremely high speed. It was a whole different case when the question was posed as, “how fast were the cars moving when they bumped into each other?” the kind of responses received from the latter would suggest that the cars were moving at a lower speed as compared to the responses to the former question (Sarah,2018). Further, when the participants were approached a week later and asked whether there were broken glasses at the accident scene, the ones that had heard the term “smash” had more tendency to answer that there were pieces of broken glasses at the accident scene while actually in the video they had
66 watched there were no broken pieces of glass. It is therefore quite observable that the misinformation effect and the long-term memory casts skepticism on the reliability and the admissibility of the witness statement made by an eyewitness, a kind of testimony that is widely relied upon in criminal cases. False consensus effect is the tendency of people to do an overestimate of the level to which other people are in agreement with their beliefs. The bias is characterized by the tendency of people to believe that their ideas and beliefs are normal and that several other people share the same opinion (Sarah,2018). This kind of cognitive bias can lead to someone making a decision affecting other people in a way that will disappoint them due to his belief that they would definitely agree with him.