Bias and Ego? Not me!

Recently I handed out an open invitation to my house to watch "Try it on Everything", a DVD that demonstrates the use and results of EFT, the Emotional Freedom Technique. I had no profit motive. I simply wanted to spread the word about ways to release blocked energy in the body's electromagnetic field.

The very first day of my invitation two people showed up. I attempted to "set the scene" for a few minutes only, and then I played the video. Their faces developed expressions as they watched that looked like boredom to me.

I turned off the video.

They began talking about everything but "Try it on Everything." Obviously, they didn't believe what they saw. I didn't mind, butit set me to thinking about perception. Yesterday I came across an article by Jack Fewx for technologists on the subject of bias.

He writes, "'You're biased!' 'You're prejudiced!' Notparticularly nice things to be called. Labeled as such, especially in today's world, you could find yourself in hot water very quickly. However, these labels are generally not unfitting, despite their slanderous nature. The only problem is that we all exhibit bias, but no one wants to admit it.

"What is bias? How does it start? Is there anyone really neutral? What issues does it affect? And how do we deal with it?

"A high school student is challenging the bias of an "AmericanGovernment" text book. In this particular case, the teen isalleging that the authors are presenting incorrect or unbalancedfacts, with a significant conservative slant. Without having read the book, I can't say anything about the teen's argument, but I can say without a doubt that in order to perceive bias in the text, the teen is biased against the views of the authors. That's not to say that the teen or the authors are wrong, just that their opinions and views of the world differ. This phenomenon is actually well researched.

"Psychologists call this issue Confirmation Bias: 'Confirmationbias is a phenomenon wherein decision makers have been shown toactively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or under weigh evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis.'"

In other words, we see what we want to see, not necessarily because of anything intentional, but because of the influences of our past experiences.

Most of us are unaware of our biases. Writing fast without editing as we write helps us discover them. (italics mine)

"It is a well-known issue in the practice of law that eyewitnesses are a very unreliable source. Many people, viewing the same event can come up to drastically different conclusions of what happened. This has nothing to do with people being unable to see or hear properly, but that our minds naturally interpret everything based on our past experiences.

"So understanding that I'm naturally biased, as everyone else is,then it makes reading studies a little brain warping. . . . Numerous studies have been done to try and prove that professorsare liberally leaning. Now, regardless of the facts of the case,it can be concluded that when I read a meta-analysis, I inject mypersonal bias into it, in addition to the reviewer's bias, which is in addition to the original studies biases, which is compounded with bias of the interviewed students, all about the perceived bias of college professors.

"All of this said, what does this mean to us as technologists andother humans? First off and simply put, 'Don't believe everything you read.'

"Deeper than that, it means that we need to be very careful toweigh the facts, if possible. Where we can't get all the facts, it is important to be open-minded and willing to read opinions that differ from ours. Once the extremes of opinions are taken into account, it makes the middle ground easier to discover. Theinterpretation of data is so vitally important to research, but it carries so much human baggage with it.

"The issues are everywhere, and the flame wars quickly follow. Whether it is Intel vs. AMD, HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray, Nvidia vs. ATI,Ford vs. Chevy, or even Evolution vs. Intelligent Design, there are far more opinions and egos involved than there are facts."

~~~

My guests had their minds made up that EFT is just anotherunnecessary trend in marketing. I assumed from my prejudice thattheir egos' desire to demonstrate their own knowledge motivatedthem.

How do you define "ego?"

Listening to a disc by Dr. Hawkins on kinesiology I heard anotherdefinition. He says, I think, that ego comes from an early stage in the evolution of the human brain and was necessary for survival. That altered my New England background's prejudice against it.

Now I advocate, even more, the process of discovering our ownbiases so we can exchange ideas with those of opposite ones. Yet, I continue to preach my biases to the choir.

In this fascinating article, Jack Fewx concludes, "Before you write the other side off, stop! Hear the other side out, give their ideas some serious thought, and then draw your own conclusions. You just might find a gold nugget in the midst of what you thought was complete drivel."

I'm beginning to do that, but it's hard.

EvyEvelyn Cole, MA, MFAThe whole-mind Writer

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