Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Although, we're not saying natural biases are good. I mean, getting sick sometimes is natural, but we try to avoid it. So saying that it's natural. It's not the same as saying that it's good. <inaudible> hello. I'm Joseph shawls. Welcome to the deep culture podcast, where we explore culture and the science of mind. This is a podcast for people who move between different cultural worlds. We talk about intercultural experiences and we dig into the science and the psychology of culture at mind. And I'm here today with Yvonne Vanderpoel as usual. How are you doing today, Yvonne? Hi, Joseph. Nice to be here. I'm doing great. It's lovely. And sunny weather here in the Netherlands here in Tokyo. I had a perfect spring day. There were cherry blossoms. You've seen my street lined with these cherry blossom trees and they were fluttering. The petals were fluttering down at Westlake.
Speaker 0 00:01:20 The perfect image of Japan. Oh wow. It seems like a fairy tale. I remember your street, but not for this beautiful pink trees. Fantastic. Also on my balcony, we have three tulips. So maybe there's a tiny bit of the Netherlands. Yeah, that's fun. Yeah. I have them in my garden too. So Yvonne, what are we talking about today? Well, well, let's talk about bias. Yes. This is a powerful word. Uh, the word itself sounds bad. Yeah. It sounds like a criticism or even an accusation. And of course, to say someone is biased. It sounds like they are not seeing things clearly. Or they have some negative attitudes or predators. Yeah. And we hear people talking about bias these days in discussions about prejudice discussions, about discrimination and inequality, injustice, which we're going to ask you to think about the word bias in a new way.
Speaker 0 00:02:27 Yes. We're going to be talking about cognitive bias or we could say cognitive biases. And this is the many ways that our mind naturally takes shortcuts and judges things inaccurately or jumps to wrong conclusions. You say naturally. Yes. Naturally, because from the perspective of cognitive science, in terms of mental functioning bias is natural. It's the default setting. It's just the way that our minds work. Okay. So means bias is not bias well, right by as it's natural. So it's normal, it's unavoidable to have cognitive biases. So in that sense, bias is not bias. Bias is normal. Okay. Well, and we're going to talk about them today in this podcast because cultural bridge people need to know about them. They are super important in foreign situations or when dealing with cultural difference. So we're going to dig into this bias topic with three questions. What is bias?
Speaker 0 00:03:33 Why are they important across cultures and what can brain and mind science tell us about them? So that brings us to part one bias. What's that S the action of supporting or opposing a particular person or thing in an unfair way. So that's a deck actionary definition of bias. Yeah. So when we hear the word bias, we often think about prejudice. Perhaps it's a bit more accurate to say that prejudice is a particular kind of bias. In fact, there are many different types of bias, right? And sometimes for example, we hear the word implicit bias, which is one type of bias, and it refers to unconscious negative attitudes about a certain category of person, for example. So we can be prejudiced without recognizing it. And there are a lot of questions about how to overcome prejudice. And because of that, understanding bias is really important.
Speaker 0 00:04:49 But when we're talking about bias in intercultural situations, we're not talking about prejudice. Exactly. We're talking about natural biases and these are kind of mental shortcuts, uh, that take us to wrong conclusions. Yeah. And that's a strange term, actually natural biases. But in fact, the human mind is naturally biased. We are unavoidably biased. It's part of our, how our mind works. Although we're not saying natural biases are good. I mean, getting sick sometimes is natural, but we try to avoid it. So saying that it's natural. It's not the same as saying that it's good. No, of course. But to avoid them, we need to understand them. So we're going to look a bit more deeply at these natural biases and from the brain mind science perspective in particular cognitive psychology, you would call these biases, cognitive biases. Well, here's the Wikipedia definition for cognitive bias.
Speaker 0 00:05:56 Cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from a norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own subjective reality from their perception of the input. Thus cognitive biases may sometimes lead to accurate judgment. Wow. That sounds complicated. I like one part of that was systematic patterns of deviation from the norm. It makes me feel smart just to say it well. And I also liked the part about individuals create their own subjective reality. Oh, that's deep. That sounds like part psychology and part philosophy. I, I make my own reality. Well, let's not go too far into outer space, but let's see what this means into everyday in everyday life. Okay. Let's see what this means in everyday life. And that brings us to part two bias and the bicycle.
Speaker 0 00:07:08 Okay. Oh, Joseph, let me tell you a story. When I wrote my bike years ago and it's related to bias actually, you're, you're into it, I'm into it. So this is your, this is your bicycle bias story. Yeah. I had a yellow bike riding through the cities of the hake and a very rainy day. Um, you know, the streets were not only wet, but also extremely slippery. So all of a sudden I got caught in a chant track and dang, I said, this is like the wheel of the wheel of the bicycle. Buttstock the tramp, the racking. And so that makes you like bike fall over to the side. Yeah. Usually I can get my balance, but that time it was just too slippery. So back there I found myself, well, actually I fell hard and I found myself there sort of well, half sitting, laying on the sidewalk and, you know, being a bit dizzy and I'm thinking, well, did I break something sort of realizing this what happened? And, and, you know, finding myself back, I heard this wonderful tender frenzy voicing, how are you? Okay. And please take your time. And you know, so nice. And then at the moment I opened my eyes, I was like, oh, let's talk. But you're huge. The two. And I was like some mismatch I didn't think of, or didn't have the image of the person being so caring, also having this ton of tattoos. And it was this huge one that wasn't, I, and it was on the top of his albums staring at me.
Speaker 0 00:08:50 I still remember the details. It's amazing. Yeah, no, it happened in a split second. It's amazing. I was responses. I realized that responses to the world are so much influenced by previous experience. And, you know, I apparently had never received any positive messages about people having to choose. Um, so I suppose right there on that spot, that sidewalk. So this reaction that you had was based on previous experience, and it was a reaction in the moment, and these are the kinds of biases that brain and mind sciences are teaching us about. They're teaching us that as humans, we're constantly constructing a view of the world and reacting to that, based on our past experience, our brain is a kind of predictive machine that is constantly anticipating, evaluating, judging a wanting this. I don't want that. Yeah. Let's admit, you know, we're all full of judgments and evaluation.
Speaker 0 00:10:07 That's what I've been doing all day, trying to get this, trying to avoid that those are our biases. And, you know, it's overly fair that our eyes are not cameras or our ears are not just microphones, right? Our perceptions are not simply recording. What is going on around us. We're always reacting based on our intuitive mind, the psychologist, Jonathan Haidt talks about the intuitive mind, like our beloved elephant, which carries us along while we go along for the ride. And our conscious mind is just justifying the path that it chooses. And so in this case, you know, your intuitive elephant had this reaction to the tattoos. Oh my yellow bike. Can you imagine?
Speaker 0 00:11:01 Yeah. So in this case, though, you were in a familiar environment and you experienced bias based on your previous experience, but that raises a question for people who are crossing borders or in foreign situations in unfamiliar situations. What about bias when we're in an unfamiliar environment? Well, that brings us to part three, take your bias abroad. If you're walking down the street in a foreign country that you're just visiting for the first time, you know, you hear the sounds and see the sites and you look around and you notice all these differences. And it's very exciting. It's very stimulating, but that is a lot of information and a lot of experience for your mind to process. So we are particularly vulnerable to biases in foreign situations. Not just because we're tired, but because there are many things we don't understand, it can be hard to interpret things.
Speaker 0 00:12:20 We don't know how to make sense of things. We, we easily jump to conclusions. Yeah. And especially when we're under stress, we're mentally tired. You know, we're even more successful to bias and to make those negative negative judgements. And we all do it. That's not present. We don't, oh, I'm Mr. International. I'd never, I never make any negativity. Let's be honest. You know, we all do ethnocentric. This just means that we judge things from our own cultural perspective based on our experience up to that point. I mean, how could it be any other way? When I came to Japan, I came with my American cultural glasses. Everything I saw was filtered through my experience as an American. So I was in Japan having an American experience of Japan. So we can never completely eliminate ethnocentrism because our experience is limited, but we can learn to see the world with new cultural glasses. You add new perspectives. It's like learning a foreign language. You add another dimension to how you communicate or how you see things. So ethnocentrism is I guess, the most important natural bias that cultural bridge people need to be aware of, but there are many other cognitive biases that we need to know about my favorite or favorite one. Right.
Speaker 0 00:14:05 Interesting. It's interesting for me is the fundamental attribution error. And this is something that all internationalists should know about the fundamental attribution error. It causes us to evaluate other people or the behavior of other people as though it's caused by some essential quality personality or character. And we tend to downplay or ignore situational factors. And that's important in a foreign situation because we're always trying to figure out other people's behavior. So I am living in Japan and I teach a lot of non-Japanese students who come to Japan and they take classes with Japanese students. And they'll say something like, well, you know why don't, uh, Japanese students raise their hands in class, I guess, you know, they're shy, but Japanese are not shy. Japanese have a reserved communication style, but in a Japanese classroom, it's not typical to raise your hand. That is situational. And so, but the foreign students see this behavior and they assume that this behavior is caused by some inner quality of shyness in Japanese people.
Speaker 0 00:15:30 And that tendency to define things in terms of this inner quality is the fundamental attribution error. And you also hear it with someone who says, oh, the locals were so friendly. They're so nice. Well, what does that mean? That they're friendly. You need to pay attention to the situation. And were you a customer, were you staying at an expensive hotel? You need to judge things contextually. So that's one of the biases that I think is really interesting. Do you have a favorite? Oh, favorite? It still sounds awkward to me, but in the context of bias, no, but whereas my fascination is each and every time towards us and them towards in-group and out-group, that's really what I found intriguing. And so there you have this tend to make feat, which is called the in-group it throat DNA and the out-group homo made. So what we do, we often perceive our in-groups us as more heterogeneous, um, more diverse.
Speaker 0 00:16:41 We are more layered. We understand it so much better. And on the other side, the out-group, uh, homogenity effects is that how it's called it's the perception of those out-group members as more similar to one another than to our in group members. And what we then typically say is things as they're all alike, we are the first. All right. So when you're with a bunch of people that you feel that you share a lot with at sea in group, they all seem so diverse and so distinct and so unique, but when it's the other, uh, they all seem kind of the same. Yeah, exactly. I think Americans are actually particularly susceptible to this idea of, you know, oh, we're all unique. Me and all my friends, we're all unique. We have this obsession with, you know, defining ourselves as unique. So we tend not to see what's similar and it's the others that, uh, that, uh, seem to be the same.
Speaker 0 00:17:39 It's amazing how that works. And it's in deep, in depth, it comes from the us, them and the ingroup outgroup efficients that we easily make. That comes also from brain mind science, of course. And this is also made stronger because we have a natural bias to be comforted by what's familiar and to find things that are unfamiliar to be tiring or even threatening. So there's a lot of feeling of having to manage the unknown. We've all heard of cultural stress or culture shock when we're in an unfamiliar environment, we get tired psychologically. Uh that's what happens when our, when we're overloaded. And so our reactions to a foreign place depend on how we feel at that moment and on our past experience. Yeah. I remember for instance, when my American home stay sister came over to Europe, she was so excited. Then she got so homesick and I felt sorry for her.
Speaker 0 00:18:44 And the unfamiliar was really stressful for her. And in the end she wanted to go to McDonald's. So we visited the McDonald's in Paris, in Porto, in Portugal, and later on in Solomon kinds. Then after all that was about 10 days time, then it was over by Eylea and all those things. So this was like the McDonald's tour of Europe for your whole America for me. But after 10 days, she started to feel more at ease. Yeah, exactly. Well, I, I mean, I will admit, I ate at McDonald's in Hong Kong when I was traveling there years ago, and I remember feeling a little bit guilty about this. I was thinking, you know, here I am in this exotic place, what seemed to be exotic at that time? But I just had this, that was like this gravitational pole that was pulling me towards the familiar. It just felt so comforting to have the familiar. And so it's natural. This is a natural reaction. A culture shock is natural. It's simply an overload of our ability to process and digest our experiences. And the thing that's striking is how these reactions are so typical and so common. And these are not the only ones, cognitive psychologists, they study all kinds of different biases. And that raises the question of like, well, how many biases are there? What are they, what are they? Well, that actually brings us to part four, the wheel of bias.
Speaker 0 00:20:46 There are so many biases that have been studied. For instance, when you search on Wikipedia on cognitive bias codex, you'll find this list of 188 cognitive biases into categories. I have, it's an amazing visual that gives a great overview and it's actually in the shape of a wheel. That's why we call it the wheel of bias, right. And I really recommend, definitely take a look at the cognitive bias codex. It has all of this information about all of these different biases and it arranges them in a way that makes sense based on the limitations of our mental processing. So for example, one of our limitations is a limited ability to remember. So what should we remember? So we have a tendency to edit and reinforce memories afterwards, and we have a tendency to discard specifics and form generalities, which is for example, prejudice and stereotyping and implicit stereotypes.
Speaker 0 00:21:56 Those are ways in which we're discarding specifics and forming generalities, uh, because we can't remember everything. And another limitation we have is there's just too much information in the world. And so for example, we tend to notice flaws in others more easily than when we, then we notice flaws in ourself and we are drawn to details that confirm our own beliefs. And we notice when something has changed. And this happens when we're in a foreign country, right? We notice all this stuff that has changed. Uh, so that's all related to too much information, which is really common, uh, in intercultural situations, of course, and then there's not enough meaning in our environment, sometimes we need to make judgements based on limited information. So, you know, we imagine things and people that we're familiar with, uh, as better and, and we simplify numbers to make them easier to think about. And we think that we know what other people are thinking, and these are all biases related to meaning, and we need to act fast in the face of uncertainty. So we tend to favor the immediate things that are right in front of us. And we tend to complete things that we've already invested time and energy in.
Speaker 0 00:23:33 And so in order to be confident that we can make an impact, uh, we want to feel that what we're doing is important and all of these things are related to the need to act fast. So definitely check out this cognitive bias. I've just given you all this information, but if you look at the Gaga, the Bible, so you'll see this 188 different ones. It's really an amazing visual. I think it's so amazing. It's almost overwhelming. And it also raises the question, why does our mind work that way? Yeah. And, you know, I guess in one sense, it's obvious that our, our minds are limited, but in fact, it's a product of our evolutionary psychology. You know, a bias is really just a systematic tendency to produce a particular outcome. So we're biased towards something. So when we say a casino, for example, is biased in favor of the house.
Speaker 0 00:24:33 We mean that the rules are set up so that they have a tendency to win. So human biases are a bias towards behavior, which results in the survival of the species that our mind has evolved to work in the way that it does, because that is what has allowed us to survive. Yeah. Okay. Well, after having said all of this, about roots of bias, um, by the origin of bias, can we get rid of bias by studying them? Well, no, of course not. I mean, it's just, it's just the way that we are as human beings. I mean, bias is bias is not the problem. The ignorance of our biases is the problem. If we don't recognize our biased nature, we fool ourselves. And we, you know, we accept the illusion that our view of the world is the right one. And we, you know, we look for validation, we want to feel important.
Speaker 0 00:25:43 We want to be right. And we reject the things that don't make us feel good. Uh, we hate being wrong. So yeah, it's hard to change all that to you. And when you say all this, it reminds me of another wheel actually. And then that's in essence deals with bions and it's the buffet check that it comes from Buddhism, it's the Buddhist wheel of life. Um, and it's famous visualization usually painted on bowls or as, as an image on canvas, you know, I've seen depictions, um, and it's in a circle and there are animals, but I don't really know what the significance, and there are many circles. This is a very intriguing wheel of life. That's what it's all about. Um, but when you look at the core and in the hub, the wheel, there are three animals and what you see as a pig, snake and a rooster, and they are biting each other's tails.
Speaker 0 00:26:54 And what I represent is the three poisons and these poisons are ignorance, aversion and attachment. Okay. So ignorance, aversion, and attachment. So I'm, I'm looking at one now and I see that the snake and the rooster are shown as coming out of the mouth of the pig. Yeah. It's depicted sometimes in various ways, but that's also what has been said. It's indicates that version and attachments arise from ignorance and the snake and the roost are also shown us grasping the tail of the pig, indicating that they in turn, promote greater ignorance. So it's, self-reinforcing so ignorance leads to aversion and attachment, and that leads to more ignorance and that leads to more aversion and attachment. Yeah. So if you don't interfere in test the loop for your into, and it all relates back to ignorance and, uh, we feel eversion towards others and the unknown, and we see attachments to our own in-group and your familiar and ignorance is the basis of all of this.
Speaker 0 00:28:05 It's the lack of knowing the world for what it is actually. So that's what it is. Do we really see what is here? How do we actually see that is what is often said, um, and trying to make our own concerns, the center of everything, right? So it's in fact, trying to make us the center of everything that drives this, this whole dynamic, and, you know, that's with unconscious bias or the kinds of biases that cultural bridge people need. It's it, there's a very similar thing. It's recognizing that our understanding is limited is this kind of super power of being a cultural bridge person, because when you have foreign experiences, what you discover is your ignorance. And so in that sense, knowledge, knowledge of bias doesn't solve anything. Knowledge of our ignorance doesn't solve anything, but it does open our eyes to learning. And that's what we want from our intercultural experiences.
Speaker 0 00:29:16 We want them to enrich us and, and help us grow. But to do that, we have to recognize our own biases and our own ignorance. Yeah, exactly. And then just to add on to that, let's not forget about compassion, uh, also a key teaching of Buddhism and many religious and philosophical traditions, and you and I have already been talking about empathy. So it's all related here. It is all related, isn't it? Because when we, when we're keeping ourselves at the center of everything, it's harder to feel compassion and because compassion is reaching out to others. So, wow, Yvonne, we have really covered a lot of territory today because sudden we are here one week, two weeks, right. We start with the, you know, cognitive psychology and 188, uh, cognitive biases. The codex said, we end up with ignorance and, uh, pigs at snakes and roosters. Uh, it has been a wonderful conversation with you today, Yvonne, but I think it's about time for us to end. This was wonderful. Yes <inaudible>.
Speaker 0 00:30:35 So the tea culture podcast is sponsored by the Japan and your cultural Institute, an NPO dedicated to intercultural education and research. I am the director of GI. If you're interested in culture and the mind check out GIS, brain, mind, and culture masterclass, Yvonne and I are facilitating that. And it's a blended learning course, online community, full of cultural bridge people from all over the world. And we'd learned about a brain mind and culture to find out more, just do a web search for the Japan intercultural Institute and Yvonne, we're going to be starting a new round in may looking forward to that. Exactly. If you liked today's episode, we'd really love to hear from you. Leave a comment on apple podcasts or write us at DC podcasts at Japan, intercultural.org. We'd like to thank our sound engineer, Robinson, Fritz, and everyone at GII. And thanks to you Yvonne for sharing this time with me. Thank you. And thank you everybody for listening, and we'll see you again. Next time. <inaudible>.
