When writing an effective argument, it is critical that you are aware of your biases. It’s also important to consider how biases might affect the arguments that other authors make.

What Is Bias?

People often see a controversial play differently depending which team they’re rooting for. Your bias might determine whether or not you see a foul in a given play.

Bias is an inclination towards or against a person, thing, or idea. It describes a kind of judgment for which you can’t really give reasons. Not all judgments are biased. For instance, If you say: “I like this type of vacuum cleaner because it’s quiet and powerful”, it’s not a bias, it’s an informed consumer decision. But if you just tend to like Chevy more than Ford, we could say you’re biased toward Chevy. Unlike the Chevy/Ford example, however, bias usually describes an underlying set of preferences or aversions that influence other judgments.

For example, consider two people watching soccer together. One is a fan of the Portland Thorns. Their friend, who grew up in Texas, is rooting for the Houston Dash.

The ball pops up in front of the Houston goal. A Portland player jumps to head it in and ends up sprawled out on the ground. Was it a penalty?  As you can imagine, the Thorns fan and the Dash fan disagree.  The Thorns fan—who is biased toward their team—sees a clear penalty. “She got knocked down!” The Dash fan—equally biased toward Houston—sees a dive: “She’s fishing for a penalty kick! No one touched her!”

Sure, I have biases, but is that necessarily a bad thing?

Although the word bias sometimes has a negative connotation, it is unavoidable in our everyday lives—we all have preferences and predispositions.

Bias becomes a problem when it prevents you from making a fair or reasoned choice about something.

In this regard, implicit bias (also known as unconscious bias or implicit stereotype) is especially problematic (Greenwald and Banaji). As the name suggests, unconscious or implicit bias refers to stereotypes about people that remain hidden to the person who holds them. Unconscious biases can be extremely harmful in many circumstances—for instance, in healthcare (Marcelin), law enforcement (Ross; Weir), education (Staats), human resources (Elias et al.), and public communication (Usher, Holcomb, and Littman).

What does bias have to do with research writing?

Just as bias can cause us to make unreasoned or unfair judgments about people, it can also impair our ability to develop or analyze an argument. If we think in advance that we’re going to disagree with an article (perhaps based on what we know about the author or the publication), chances are good that we’ll find reasons to dispute its claims, even if we would agree under other circumstances. In short, we all tend to jump to conclusions based on our preexisting ideas, and this can inhibit our ability to analyze arguments and situations rationally and objectively.

Researchers have identified a number of psychological habits or tendencies that can cloud our judgment when evaluating a situation.

• Confirmation Bias is the tendency to seek out information that reaffirms our past choices and preexisting beliefs. (Nickerson)  For example, two people on social media may be arguing the existence of climate change. In the instance of confirmation bias, each of those people would look to find scientific papers and evidence that support their theories, rather than making a full examination of the situation.
• Availability Bias (a.k.a. Availability Heuristic) is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The easier it is to recall an example of something, the more important or relevant it seems to be. Having seen a lot of news reports about airline accidents, for instance, many people worry more about flying than driving, even though, statistically, driving is much riskier. Likewise, since we’re more likely to remember an exciting win than a lot of boring losses, we may overestimate our chances of winning money with scratch-off lottery tickets.
• Recency Bias is the tendency to favor recent events, experiences, or results over previous ones. Essentially, it’s an effect of our our lazy memories. Recency bias creeps into our research when we find ourselves giving more credence to sources we’ve encountered more recently, or when more recent experiences seem to outweigh previous experiences.
• Framing Bias describes how decisions are affected by the way the decision is presented. (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981) For instance, people prefer an economic agenda when high employment rates are provided, but they are against it when the complementary unemployment rates are accentuated. (Druckman) Framing effects are important to consider not only when reading or writing arguments, but also when searching for information online. The way you word your search might have a large effect on what you find!