WEBVTT 00:00:02.960 --> 00:00:07.893 We have tendencies to see things in one way or another. 00:00:07.893 --> 00:00:11.412 And that's about all sorts of things. That can be about serious personal issues; 00:00:11.412 --> 00:00:13.992 it can be about trivial things. 00:00:14.190 --> 00:00:20.575 Often the way in which *something is framed to us can actually create a bias* as well. 00:00:20.858 --> 00:00:26.260 A classic example, and there are various ways you can do this, is what's called *anchoring*. 00:00:26.260 --> 00:00:32.005 So, if we're asked something and given something that *suggests a value*, 00:00:32.005 --> 00:00:37.513 even if it's told that it's just there for guesswork purposes or something, 00:00:37.513 --> 00:00:42.040 it tends to hold us and move where we see our estimate. 00:00:42.040 --> 00:00:46.671 So, you ask somebody, "How high is the Eiffel Tower?" 00:00:46.671 --> 00:00:51.589 You might have a vague idea that it's big, but you probably don't know exactly how high. 00:00:51.589 --> 00:00:55.641 You might ask one set of people and give them a scale and say, "Put it on this scale; just draw a 00:00:55.641 --> 00:01:01.111 cross where you think on this scale from 250 meters high to 2,500 meters high. 00:01:01.111 --> 00:01:04.080 How high on that scale?" 00:01:04.100 --> 00:01:08.608 And people put crosses on the scale – you can see where they were, or put a number. 00:01:08.608 --> 00:01:13.041 But alternatively, you might give people – instead of having a scale of 00:01:13.120 --> 00:01:20.440 250 meters to 2,500 meters, you might give them a scale between 50 meters and 500 meters. 00:01:20.640 --> 00:01:23.832 Now, actually, the Eiffel Tower falls on *both* of those scales; 00:01:23.832 --> 00:01:26.160 the actual height is around 300 meters. 00:01:26.160 --> 00:01:29.583 But what you find is people don't know the answer; 00:01:29.583 --> 00:01:36.179 given the larger, higher scale, they will tend to put something that is larger and higher, 00:01:36.179 --> 00:01:39.280 even though they're told it's just a scale. 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:42.148 And actually, on the larger scale, it should be right at the bottom. 00:01:42.148 --> 00:01:45.383 Here, it should be about two-thirds of the way up the scale. 00:01:45.383 --> 00:01:51.200 But what happens is you, by framing it with big numbers, people tend to guess a bigger number. 00:01:51.225 --> 00:01:55.505 If you frame it with smaller numbers,  people guess a smaller number. 00:01:55.505 --> 00:01:59.795 They're anchored by the nature of the way the question is posed. 00:01:59.835 --> 00:02:04.115 So, how might you get away from some of this fixation? We'll talk about some other things later, 00:02:04.115 --> 00:02:06.251 other ways later. 00:02:06.993 --> 00:02:10.799 But one of the ways to actually *break* some of this bias and this fixation is to 00:02:10.799 --> 00:02:14.008 *deliberately mix things up*. 00:02:14.008 --> 00:02:19.311 So, what you might do is, say, you're given the problem of *building* the Eiffel Tower. 00:02:19.311 --> 00:02:24.320 And the Eiffel Tower I said is about 300 meters tall, so about 1,000 feet tall. 00:02:24.320 --> 00:02:27.648 So, you might think, "Oh crumbs, how are we going to build this?" 00:02:27.648 --> 00:02:31.292 So, one thing you might do is say, "Imagine instead of being 00:02:31.292 --> 00:02:35.040 300 meters tall, it was just 3 meters tall. 00:02:35.078 --> 00:02:38.984 How would I go about building it, then?" And you might think, "Well, I'd build a big, perhaps a 00:02:38.984 --> 00:02:44.280 scaffolding, or 30 meters tall – I might build a scaffolding and just hoist things up to the top." 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:49.454 So, then you say, "Well, OK, can I build a scaffolding at 300 meters; does that make sense?" 00:02:49.454 --> 00:02:54.864 Alternatively, you might say, "Perhaps it's 300,000 *miles* tall, 00:02:54.864 --> 00:02:57.934 basically reaching as high as the Moon. 00:02:58.472 --> 00:03:02.080 How might I build it, then?" Well, there's no way you're going to hoist things up a scaffold. 00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:06.683 All the workers at the top would have no oxygen because they'd be up above the atmosphere. 00:03:06.683 --> 00:03:11.920 So, you might then think about hoisting it up from the bottom, building the top first, 00:03:11.920 --> 00:03:15.600 hoisting the whole thing up; building the  next layer; hoisting the whole thing up; 00:03:15.600 --> 00:03:20.166 building the next layer – you know – like jacking a car and then sticking bits underneath. 00:03:20.633 --> 00:03:26.266 So, by just thinking of a *completely different* scale, you start to think of different kinds of solutions. 00:03:26.266 --> 00:03:29.658 It forces you out of that fixation. 00:03:29.658 --> 00:03:34.126 You might just swap things around. I mean, this works quite well if you're worried 00:03:34.126 --> 00:03:37.929 that you're using some sort of racial or gender bias; 00:03:37.929 --> 00:03:41.080 you just swap the genders of the people involved in the story 00:03:41.080 --> 00:03:46.035 or swap their ethnic background, and often the way you look 00:03:46.035 --> 00:03:50.560 at the story differently might tell you something about some of the biases you bring to it. 00:03:51.527 --> 00:03:56.880 In politics, if you hear a statement from a  politician and you either react positively or 00:03:56.880 --> 00:04:01.441 negatively to it, it might be worth just thinking what you'd imagine if that statement 00:04:01.441 --> 00:04:05.133 came from the mouth of another politician, that was of a different persuasion; 00:04:05.133 --> 00:04:07.237 how would you read it then? 00:04:07.237 --> 00:04:11.929 And it's not that you change your views  drastically by doing this, 00:04:11.929 --> 00:04:17.460 but it helps you to perhaps expose why you view these things differently. 00:04:17.460 --> 00:04:21.095 And some of that might be valid reasons; sometimes, you might think, "Actually, 00:04:21.095 --> 00:04:24.000 I need to rethink some of the ways I'm working."