Season: 10 Episode: 150
Listen to episode 146 in Spanish:
Summary:
Do you know why first impressions are important? Because if you dress up and look put together, you’re more likely to convince people that looking good means you are good. This is called the halo effect and it’s a bias we see in 1 Samuel when God accuses Samuel of choosing a king based upon his appearance. Everyone has biases, including you. Shanda talks about what biases are, how to identify them, and why they are a barrier to good thinking. She shares her own experiences with biases and how humility is needed to face them.
Quotables:
Resources on this topic:
Why are the newer translation of the Bible missing verses?
Does John 7:53-8:11 belong in the Bible?
Has the Bible been corrupted, altered, edited, revised or tampered with?
Recommended Resources:
Cross Examined Article: Don’t Panic: A Step by Step Approach to Teaching Kids About God
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Hey everyone! Welcome back to another episode of Her Faith Inspires podcast where we take cultural issues and we look at them from biblical truth. We are on episode 190. Can you believe that? I can’t. But I do have some exciting news – when we hit episode 200, we are going to celebrate with new music, a new YouTube look, and maybe a giveaway or two, so hang in there. We’re figuring things out over here and it’s busy up in here. But I want to celebrate with you because you’re here and you listen to me each week, and I appreciate those of you who ask me questions, interact with me, and for my Patreon ladies who like to read books with me. You know who you are.
I have an episode for you today that I hope will help you think better.
Today, we’re talking about our biases. And here’s the deal, we all have biases. Not one of us is not biased. But we’re not going to talk about this from a cultural perspective, we’re going to discuss it from a biblical perspective, because that’s what we do here.
I was on Dr. Frank Turek’s podcast last week discussing how to train your brain to think well, and we decided to make this course available for adults in the self-paced version that also comes out in October. If you want your child to take this course with me, sign them up because they will get to learn how to think and how to identify biases. I think this course is going to be so much fun and I am so excited for it to come out, so what we talk about here is going to be something you’ll learn in more depth during TYB. You can go to onlinecourses.com to sign up.
Here’s what we’re going to discuss:
- What is a bias?
- What are some common biases you should be aware of?
- Why does this matter?
What is a bias?
Simply put, and from the Oxford Dictionary, a bias is, “prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.”
So what does it mean to be prejudice? Oxford says it is, “a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.” Again, it is not based on reason or evidence. Maybe it’s based on emotion or the influence of others, but it’s not based on reason or evidence.
The first thing we have to realize is that we all have biases. We are all influenced by emotions, the opinions of others, and outside influences. What we need to do is recognize them and address them. Biases become a barrier to good thinking. They also lead to being dishonest because we don’t want to be proven wrong.
Notice in the definition of bias it has the word prejudice in it and in the definition of prejudice it has the word favor in it. Favoritism is a form of bias.
And God hates favoritism because it’s unfair.
It’s unbalanced scales.
Favoritism is when you show special treatment to someone or something over another. When there’s favoritism there has to be more than one thing. It’s a result to comparing one thing to another. James 2:1-4 says, “My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”
This is in comparison to social standing.
Now, what if it comes to something like food? Like, my favorite pizza is pepperoni from Round Table? That’s not showing favoritism. So what makes this bad? It’s “prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared to another, usually considered to be unfair.” So of course we have to keep this in the proper context. I’m not saying you can’t have a favorite kind of pizza or a favorite vacation spot.
Favoritism itself is giving “preferential treatment to a person or group at the expense of another.” And although the word bias itself is not in the Bible, we see that God speaks unfavorable about favoritism and tells us it’s wrong. That means we have to be aware of when we’re doing it and why because biases are a barrier to good thinking.
I checked out an article from Psychology Today about biases so you get a hopefully well-rounded view of why we need to be aware of our own biases.
Here’s what they have to say:
“A cognitive bias refers to a “systematic error” in the thinking process. Such biases are often connected to a heuristic, which is essentially a mental shortcut – heuristics allow one to make an inference without extensive deliberation and/or reflective judgment, given that they are essentially schemas for such solutions.” A schema, according to Psychology Today, is “a structure that allows organisms to interpret and understand the world around them.”
This is something we talk about a lot in teaching.
When you can relate something new to something the student already knows, then it helps them grasp a new concept. But in this case, the bias becomes a barrier and causes them to interpret the new information with the influence of the bias.
What I also want to make clear is the bias in our culture today has to do with racism and prejudices and that’s the main way the culture talks about them. But there are many types of biases that hinder good thinking that have to do with the things you purchase and why, the decisions you make, dangers and warnings that can cause harm.
In regard to what the Bible says about biases, it usually has to do with the outward appearance vs the inward appearance. We see this in 1 Samuel when God chose David to be the king. Everyone thought the most handsome and put together brothers would have been the first choice, but God said He rejected them. And think about it – Saul was a tall and handsome king but his heart was not after Gods. So even Samuel’s bias – that handsome somehow meant kingly – was crushed by God’s words, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.”
This is related to a bias called the halo effect – what is beautiful is good.
Our first impressions of someone cause us to think the person must be a good person since he/she is good looking.
Biases are formed by how we think the world should work.
I would say that the woman at the well in John 4 showed her bias about how to worship God. She thought worship was a physical location. She was a Samaritan and Jesus was a Jew and Jesus responded with, “Those who worship must worship in spirit and in truth.” Jesus broke through her limited thinking and told her that this hill and that hill doesn’t matter – it’s those who worship God in spirit and in truth who now how to truly worship because God is spirit.
So I want to get into some common biases and challenge you to think through where your biases might show up. And FYI: this is what you’r kids will learn in TYB that begins on October 1st. The 20% off code is TYB2023. And we’ve also made this course available for adults at the self-paced level, and I highly recommend you checking into it for your family so you learn how to think.
What are some common biases?
Confirmation Bias: Confirmation bias is when you interpret information that confirms what you believe or want to believe. This is also how people build what we call echo chambers – its when you surround yourself with people who think like you do and agree with you because it affirms what you believe.
So do Christians interpret the evidence so it confirms what they want it to? Yes. I used to do this when I’d write a paper in college. I looked for resources that confirmed my point of view or opinion.
A very honest atheist named Thomas Nigel said this in 2003 when he wrote an essay entitled “Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion.” He said, “I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear [of religion]. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that” (The Last Word, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 130). It would be helpful for all people to be as aware of and as forthright concerning their own confirmation bias.”
I think we all ought to be that aware of our own confirmation biases.
And this happens with things as simple as wanting to believe our kids didn’t really cheat on a test.
If we, as Christians, believe we have the truth, we should not be afraid of the opposing view. We can confidently research the other side of the argument and make sure we represent it well in our conversations because we know what we believe well enough to know it will stand on its own. I think a lot of times we fall prey to our own confirmation biases because we don’t know the evidence for Christianity as well as we should and we look for things to confirm what we believe.
We don’t have to do that. Know both sides and don’t be afraid of the arguments that confront the claims of God’s existence.
The Anchoring Bias: this one happens to me all the time.
We are influenced by the first piece of information we hear. Now, I am first going to relate this to Amazon because when I go on Amazon and they have a price slashed out and a new sale price listed in red, it makes me want to buy the thing. I suddenly feel like this $5 discount is a great deal because that original price that is still sitting there but with a slash through it looks so much higher than the new sale price. What do I do? Add to cart. Sly devils.
But that’s anchoring bias. Why do you think those informercials are so successful when they’re like – we’ll give you two of these back massagers for $50, but wait .. we’ll throw in a foot massager and some dental floss if you act now. Oh, but there’s more! We’ll also throw in a Nutri-Bullet Ninja blender and cut the price from $50 to only $39.99. What happens next? Grandma picks up the phone and bodda boom, bodda bing … you got a new back massager, dental floss, and nutri-bullet ninja thing. Anchoring bias – it works!
Why do you think news outlets are the first to push a story with very limited information? Because they know if they get to you first, they form your perception of the event. They are nurturing your anchoring bias.
God does not encourage us to speak first.
He encourages us to speak wisely. Proverbs 18:17, “The first one to plead his cause seems right until someone comes and cross examines him.”
Choice Supportive Bias: is when you make a decision and then hyper inflate the positives while downplaying the negatives. For example, if you are trying to decide between two different job opportunities, you might weigh the pros and cons for a while but once you make a decision, you minimize the negatives of the choice and you only focus on the positives. I’m all for focusing on the good aspects of decision making, but I think it’s important to be realistic with the challenges so you know how to tackle them, rather than minimize them.
Normalcy Bias: the last bias we’ll talk about today is the normalcy bias.
That’s when you don’t heed caution and warnings of dangers because you can’t believe something bad will happen. This is one of the most dangerous biases, and again, I’ll be honest, we get tornado warnings on our phones here in the south, and that’s new for me, and I’m like – yeah, but is it really that bad? I mean, do we really need to get into the basement? And I’ll ask people when the last time there was a tornado and they’ll be like, it’s been a while but there are some around here. And that causes me to just be like, eh.
This happens when there are warnings at the beach about the tides and people ignore those. Alligator signs and people ignore those. It’s normalcy bias – nothing is going to interrupt the status quo. Proverbs 22:3 says, “The wise see danger ahead and avoid it. Fools keep going and get into trouble.” I was just talking to my boys about normalcy bias the other day and I told them it’s when we get so comfortable avoiding the warning signs because nothing bad has happened before, that something bad actually happens.
Why does this matter?
Part of loving God with our minds is not only learning why we believe what we do. It’s also so that we are aware of our own barriers to good thinking.
And that’s the first step, right? It’s really taking an honest evaluation of ourselves. Do I put myself in an echo chamber? Am I willing to civilly discuss other view points and listen to people? The rise of social media has given us an opportunity to talk with so many more people about differing opinions, but it’s also given us the ability to create a sort of utopia on my news feed where I can listen to those who agree with me and block those who don’t.
I actually like having civil conversations with people who want to. They challenge me to dig deep into some of the things I believe and it has helped me grow stronger in my faith. It’s also revealed to me that I need to give what they’re saying a fair shake because if I believe the truth is that God exists and the evidence points to His existences, I shouldn’t be intimidated by the fact they disagree.
I should listen and be able to articulate a solid defense.
Romans 12:2 – being transformed by the renewing of our minds is a process that involves being aware of the barriers to good thinking. James tells us that God gives wisdom to all who ask and He gives it without stipulation. God is concerned with how we think and that is why the greatest command includes loving Him with all our mind.
And when you think about it, biases hinder discernment too, right? So what is discernment? Because Christians think discernment is isolated to a spiritual gift only, and it’s not. Discernment isn’t just isolated to Christianity, no I do believe discernment is connected to morality with is an objective standard that comes from God, but we won’t go there in this episode. So I am saying that being a Christian should make us better discerners. But discernment is distinguishing between two or more things. Like right from wrong, in this case. But we also discern the difference between male and female, big and small, etc.
The gift of discernment, however, is the gift of discerning spirits in 1 Cor 12:4-11.
Discerning between spirits is being able to distinguish between those who preach the word of God and those who don’t. So every believer, by the spirit, has the ability to discern and it grows as we mature in Christ. But everyone, believer and non, has the ability to distinguish between right and wrong because God put the moral law on our hearts. You can see Romans 2 and 3 for this.
But my point is, our biases can hinder our ability to discern and make decisions, if we let them get in the way. That’s why this is important.
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