Can you think of any times when you exhibited cognitive biases while learning? Photo credit: Unsplash.
“Beginner’s Mind: the idea of engaging the world without preconceptions, as if you’re seeing everything for the very first time.”
– Dean Valentini
We make millions and millions of decisions each day. And with the many, many priorities we balance as students, developing adults, and human beings, sometimes it can be difficult to keep in perspective what it means to be an open-minded learner. To each incoming Columbia College class, Dean James Valentini (i.e. Deantini) introduces the Core Competency of Beginner’s Mind as a guiding principle for life-long development. I interpret Beginner’s Mind to be a growth mindset that encourages me to be infinitely curious, approaching each engagement with humility and without pre-determined judgment. Maintaining Beginner’s Mind is one method, albeit idealistic, through which we might be able to connect with those of different opinions in an increasingly partisan and polarized society.
What makes exercising Beginner’s Mind so difficult is that registering information that conflicts with our existing knowledge can be uncomfortable. At its worst, Beginner’s Mind could be interpreted as justification for ‘debates’ on topics that are not up for debate, such as questioning the lived realities of BIPOC populations. Being able to use Beginner’s Mind is a privilege, and the hope is that those who have the power to do so apply the concept in order to understand and provide a platform for these underrepresented realities. To forward this endeavor, I wanted to explore three common psychological biases — confirmation bias, hindsight bias, and overconfidence bias — that may limit our aims towards Beginner’s Mind. To be better learners means consciously registering the ways our cognitive abilities help us make sense of the world while also potentially leading us away from challenging conversations.
Note: If you are interested in learning more about how humans make judgments and decisions in a constrained world, I highly recommend taking Professor Fox-Glassman’s Thinking & Decision-Making course in the Columbia Psychology Department. I credit this blog to this course!
Potential Pitfall #1: Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is the cognitive tendency to search for evidence that confirms your existing beliefs and to discount (or even ignore) evidence that disconfirms them. Why does this phenomenon persist? Well, it is easier and more pleasant for us to process affirming information; otherwise, confronting conflicting cognitions can cause dissonance. At the same time, it feels good to be reassured you are in the right, even if it means doubling-down on an inequitable or questionable status quo. However, confirmation bias is limiting for learners because it restricts your periphery for exploring realities. To be set in your way of thinking means to think that your understanding is as good as it can be, which notion goes against that of a growth mindset. A Beginner’s Mind is about adopting a balanced approach to seeking out knowledge to inform your opinions. When encountering evidence that denies your current stance, I encourage you to validate your feelings towards it and elaborate on those thoughts rather than ignore them.
Potential Pitfall #2: Hindsight Bias
Have you ever read a textbook chapter for class and at the end of note-taking thought to yourself, “that was pretty easy, I already knew all that information before”? If so, you might have fallen victim to hindsight bias. Hindsight bias refers to how learning information affects your memory of the time before you learned that information. In other words, it is hard to recapture the uncertainty and ignorance you once had before you learned something. Hindsight bias can manifest when we are teaching a new concept to someone else. We might think, “why is this so hard for you to understand, it was not this hard for me” and patronize someone else’s learning experience because we ourselves do not perfectly recall our past state of ignorance. Recognizing our hindsight bias can create more empathy while each of us practices our Beginner’s Mind. It can also help us appreciate our journeys to understanding rather than maintain that our current knowledge levels were inevitable. I encourage you to consider the other ways in which your learning could have panned out and reciprocate for others the things that bettered your learning experiences.
Potential Pitfall #3: Overconfidence Bias
This one is exactly as it sounds: the tendency to over-inflate your possibility at doing well at something. Confidence in learning is important because it encourages us to attempt challenging things, such as diving into an unfamiliar academic field or topic with little background. But overconfidence can lead us to believe we are more capable and competent than warranted. The Dunning-Kruger effect is an extension of overconfidence bias that describes who might more easily fall victim to overconfidence: it is highest amongst those with average competence in an area, and it decreases as competency increases. Thus, when we are new learners, we must be aware of how our perceived abilities compare to our objective levels. Practicing Beginner’s Mind means intentionally pursuing our curiosities with humility, giving credit where credit is due and recognizing our areas of growth.