Cognitive Bias In Development: How It Shows Up In Real Environments

[aklima@]

5 minute read
cognitive-bias-in-development:-how-it-shows-up-in-real-environments
In This Article
What are cognitive biases?
How do cognitive biases show up in software engineering?
Understanding bias to disrupt a vicious cycle

The world that we live in today is built on mass data collection and processing. At some point in time, companies discovered that with a large enough set of data and the right handling, they could find incredibly valuable insights about their customers and potentially capitalize on them. For those of us who depend on modern technologies in our daily lives, it feels phone number list like nearly everything we do is tracked and measured in some way. We now have an overwhelming supply of data coming in from sources everywhere. At the end of the day, all of this information must end up at a single processing point – our brains. The world of information is growing rapidly and the human brain is doing everything it can to adapt and grow along with it, but it can only do so much.

What are cognitive biases?
Enter cognitive biases; Ruhl of SimplyPsychology (2021) describes cognitive biases as “unconscious errors in thinking that arise from problems related to memory, attention, and other mental mistakes.” She explains that this is a “result from our brain’s efforts to simplify the incredibly complex world in which we live.” In other words, as we are continually presented with new information, our brains attempt to process this efficiently by making assumptions to help it all make sense – some of which are incorrect.